Burr during this time resided at Marietta, on the right bank of the river, fifteen miles above Blennerhasset's Island. He occupied himself in overseeing the building of fifteen large bateaux in which to transport his colony. Ten of these flat-bottomed boats were forty feet long, ten feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. The ends of the boats were similar, so that they could be pushed up or down stream. One boat was luxuriously fitted up, and intended to transport Mr. Blennerhasset and family, proving most conclusively that he knew nothing of any treasonable scheme against the United States.
The boats were intended to carry five hundred men, and the energy of Colonel Burr had engaged nearly the whole number. The El Dorado held out to these young men was painted in the most brilliant hues of Burr's eloquence. He told them that Jefferson, who was popular with them all, approved the plan. That they were to take possession of the immense grant purchased of Baron Bastrop, but that in case of a war between the United States and Spain, which might at any time occur, as the Mexicans were very weary of the Spanish yoke, Congress would send an army to protect the settlers and help Mexico, so that a new empire would be founded of a democratic type, and the settlers finding all on an equality, would be enabled to enrich themselves beyond all former precedent.
About this time rumors were circulated that Aaron Burr was plotting some mischief against the United States. Jefferson himself became alarmed, knowing as he so well did the ambition of Burr and his unprincipled character. A secret agent was sent to make inquiries in regard to the doings at Blennerhasset's Island and Marietta. This agent, Mr. John Graham, was assured by Mr. Blennerhasset that nothing was intended save the peaceful establishment of a colony on the banks of the Washita.
Various reports still continued to greet the public ear, and of such a nature as to make Blennerhasset's name disliked. Some said treason was lurking, and blamed him for it. He was openly spoken of as the accomplice of Burr. The legislature of Ohio even made a law to suppress all expeditions found armed, and to seize all boats and provisions belonging to such expeditions. The governor was ready at a moment's notice to call out the state militia. A cannon was placed on the river-bank at Marietta, and strict orders given to examine every boat that descended the stream.
Mr. Blennerhasset had no idea of resisting the authorities, and gave up the whole scheme, determined to meet his heavy losses as best he might.
Four boats, with about thirty men, had been landed upon Blennerhasset's Island a short time before these rigorous measures had been taken. They were under the care of Mr. Tyler, one of Burr's agents from New York, and he did all in his power to urge Blennerhasset not to retire at so critical a moment. It was, however, too late to avert calamity, and the unfortunate family was doomed to misfortune.
The alarming intelligence now reached the island that the Wood County militia was en route for that place, that the boats would be seized, the men taken prisoners, and probably the mansion burned, as the most desperate characters in the surrounding country had volunteered for the attack. Urged by his friends, Blennerhasset and the few men with him escaped by the boats. His flight was not a moment too soon, for having been branded as a traitor, no one knows what might have befallen him had the lawless men who arrived immediately after his departure found him in their power. Colonel Phelps, the commander of the militia, started in pursuit, and the remainder of his men, with no one to restrain them, gave full play to their savage feelings. Seven days of riot followed. They took possession of the house, broke into the cellars, and drank the choice wines, until, more like beasts than men, they made havoc of the rich accumulation of years. Everything was destroyed. The paintings, the ornaments, rare glass and china, family silver, furniture, and, worst vandalism of all, the flames were fed with the choicest volumes, many of which never could be duplicated, for the value of Blennerhasset's library was known through all the country.
Mrs. Blennerhasset had remained upon the island during this week of terror, hoping by her presence to restrain the lawless band, but the brave woman was at last obliged to fly with her two little sons, taking refuge on one of the flat river boats sent by a friend to afford her a way of escape.
Mr. Blennerhasset was afterwards arrested for treason, but no evidence could be found against him, and he was never brought to trial. He invested the little means left him in a cotton plantation near Natchez, where, with his devoted wife, he tried to retrieve his fallen fortunes. The second war with England rendered his plantation worthless, and returning by way of Montreal to his native land, he died a broken-hearted man, leaving his wife in destitute circumstances. An attempt was made by her friends to obtain some return for the destruction of their property from the United States government, but all proved of no avail, and she who had always been surrounded by wealth and luxury, was, during her last hours, dependent upon the charity of a society of Irish ladies in New York city, who with tenderness nursed her unto the end, and then took upon themselves the expenses of her interment.
Such is the sad story of Blennerhasset and his wife; and I thought, as I quietly moored my boat in a little creek that mingled its current with the great river, near the lower end of the island which was once such a happy home, of the uncertainty of all earthly prosperity, and the necessity there was for making the most of the present,—which last idea sent a sleepy sailor hastily under his hatch.
[Indian mound, at Moundsville, West Virginia.]
ABOUT this time the selection of resting places for the night became an important feature of the voyage. It was easy to draw the little craft out of the water on to a smooth, shelving beach, but such places did not always appear at the proper time for ending the day's rowing. The banks were frequently precipitous, and, destitute of beaches, frowned down upon the lonely voyager in anything but a hospitable manner. There were also present two elements antagonistic to my peace of mind. One was the night steamer, which, as it struggled up stream, coursing along shore to avoid the strong current, sent swashy waves to disturb my dreams by pitching my little craft about in the roughest manner. A light canoe could easily have been carried further inland, out of reach of the unwelcome waves, and would, so far as that went, have made a more quiet resting-place than the heavy duck-boat; but then, on the other hand, a sleeping-apartment in a canoe would have lacked the roominess and security of the sneak-box.
After the first few nights' camping on the Ohio, I naturally took to the channelless side of one of the numerous islands which dot the river's surface, or, what was still better, penetrated into the wild- looking creeks and rivers, more than one hundred of which enter the parent stream along the thousand miles of its course. Here, in these secluded nooks, I found security from the steamer's swash.
The second objectionable element on the Ohio was the presence of tramps, rough boatmen, and scoundrels of all kinds. In fact, the Ohio and Mississippi rivers are the grand highway of the West for a large class of vagabonds. One of these fellows will steal something of value from a farm near the river, seize the first bateau, or skiff, he can find, cross the stream, and descend it for fifty or a hundred miles. He will then abandon the stolen boat if he cannot sell it, ship as working-hand upon the first steamer or coal-ark he happens to meet, descend the river still further, and so escape detection.
To avoid these rough characters, as well as the drunken crews of shanty-boats, it was necessary always to enter the night's camping- ground unobserved; but when once secreted on the wooded shore of some friendly creek, covered by the dusky shades of night, I felt perfectly safe, and had no fear of a night attack from any one. Securely shut in my strong box, with a hatchet and a Colt's revolver by my side, and a double-barrelled gun, carefully charged, snugly stowed under the deck, the intruder would have been in danger, and not the occupant of the sneak-box.
The hatch, or cover, which rested upon the stern of the boat during rowing-hours, was at night dropped over the hold, or well, in such a way as to give plenty of ventilation, and still, at the same time, to be easily and instantly removed in case of need.
I must not fail here to mention one characteristic feature possessed by the sneak-box which gives it an advantage over every other boat I have examined. Its deck is nowhere level, and if a person attempts to step upon it while it is afloat, his foot touches the periphery of a circle, and the spoon-shaped, keelless, little craft flies out as if by magic from under the pressure of the foot, and without further warning the luckless intruder falls into the water.
At the summer watering-places in Barnegat Bay it used to be a great source of amusement to the boatmen to tie a sneak-box to a landing, and wait quietly near by to see the city boys attempt to get into her. Instead of stepping safely and easily into the hold, they would invariably step upon the rounded deck, when away would shoot the slippery craft, and the unsuccessful boarder would fall into two feet of water, to the great amusement of his comrades. When once inside of the sneak-box, it becomes the stiffest and steadiest of crafts. Two men can stand upright upon the flooring of the hold and paddle her along rapidly, with very little careening to right or left.
By far the most interesting and peculiar features of a winter's row down the Ohio are the life-studies offered by the occupants of the numerous shanty-boats daily encountered. They are sometimes called, and justly too, family-boats, and serve as the winter homes of a singular class of people, carrying their passengers and cargoes from the icy region of the Ohio to New Orleans. Their annual descent of the river resembles the migration of birds, and we invariably find those of a feather flocking together. It would be hard to trace these creatures to their lair; but the Alleghany and Monongahela region, with the towns of the upper Ohio, may be said to furnish most of them. Let them come from where they may (and we feel sure none will quarrel for the honor of calling them citizens), the fall of the leaf seems to be the signal for looking up winter-quarters, and the river with its swift current the inviting path to warmer suns and an easy life.
The shanty-boatman looks to the river not only for his life, but also for the means of making that life pleasant; so he fishes in the stream for floating lumber in the form of boards, planks, and scantling for framing to build his home. It is soon ready. A scow, or flatboat, about twenty feet long by ten or twelve wide, is roughly constructed. It is made of two-inch planks spiked together. These scows are calked with oakum and rags, and the seams are made water-tight with pitch or tar. A small, low house is built upon the boat, and covers about two- thirds of it, leaving a cockpit at each end, in which the crews work the sweeps, or oars, which govern the motions of the shanty-boat. If the proprietor of the boat has a family, he puts its members on board,—not forgetting the pet dogs and cats,—with a small stock of salt pork, bacon, flour, potatoes, molasses, salt, and coffee. An old cooking-stove is set up in the shanty, and its sheet-iron pipe, projecting through the roof, makes a chimney a superfluity. Rough bunks, or berths, are constructed for sleeping-quarters; but if the family are the happy possessors of any furniture, it is put on board, and adds greatly to their respectability. A number of steel traps, with the usual double-barrelled gun, or rifle, and a good supply of ammunition, constitute the most important supplies of the shanty-boat, and are never forgotten. Of these family-boats alone I passed over two hundred on the Ohio.
This rude, unpainted structure, with its door at each end of the shanty, and a few windows relieving the barrenness of its sides, makes a very comfortable home for its rough occupants.
If the shanty-man be a widower or a bachelor, or even if he be a married man laboring under the belief that his wife and he are not true affinities, and that there is more war in the house than is good for the peace of the household, he looks about for a housekeeper. She must be some congenial spirit, who will fry his bacon and wash his shirts without murmuring. Having found one whom he fondly thinks will "fill the bill," he next proceeds to picture to her vivid imagination the delights of "drifting." "Nothing to do," he says, "but to float with the current, and eat fresh pork, and take a hand at euchre." The woods, he tells her, are full of hogs. They shall fall an easy prey to his unfailing gun, and after them, when further south, the golden orange shall delight her thirsty soul, while all the sugar-cane she can chew shall be gathered for her. Add to these the luxury of plenty of snuff with which to rub her dainty gums, with the promise of tobacco enough to keep her pipe always full, and it will be hard to find among this class a fair one with sufficient strength of mind to resist such an offer; so she promises to keep house for him as long as the shanty-boat holds together.
Her embarkation is characteristic. Whatever her attire, the bonnet is there, gay with flowers; a pack of cards is tightly grasped in her hand; while a worn, old trunk, tied with a cord and fondly called a "saratoga," is hoisted on board; and so, for better or for worse, she goes forth to meet her fate, or, as she expresses it, "to find luck."
More than one quarrel usually occurs during the descent of the Mississippi, and by the time New Orleans is reached the shanty-boatman sets his quondam housekeeper adrift, where, in the swift current of life, she is caught by kindred spirits, and being introduced to city society as the Northern Lily, or Pittsburgh Rose, is soon lost to sight, and never returns to the far distant up-river country.
Another shanty-boat is built by a party of young men suffering from impecuniosity. They are "out of a job," and to them the charms of an independent life on the river is irresistible. Having pooled their few dollars to build their floating home, they descend to New Orleans as negro minstrels, trappers, or thieves, as necessity may demand.
Cobblers set afloat their establishments, calling attention to the fact by the creaking sign of a boot; and here on the rushing river a man can have his heel tapped as easily as on shore.
Tin-smiths, agents and repairers of sewing machines, grocers, saloon- keepers, barbers, and every trade indeed is here represented on these floating dens. I saw one circus-boat with a ring twenty-five feet in diameter upon it, in which a troop of horsemen, acrobats, and flying trapze artists performed while their boat was tied to a landing.
The occupants of the shanty-boats float upon the stream with the current, rarely doing any rowing with their heavy sweeps. They keep steadily on their course till a milder climate is reached, when they work their clumsy craft into some little creek or river, and securely fasten it to the bank. The men set their well-baited steel traps along the wooded watercourse for mink, coons, and foxes. They give their whole attention to these traps, and in the course of a winter secure many skins. While in the Mississippi country, however, they find other game, and feast upon the hogs of the woods' people. To prevent detection, the skin, with the swine-herd's peculiar mark upon it, is stripped off and buried.
When engaged in the precarious occupation of hog-stealing, the shanty- man is careful to keep a goodly number of the skins of wild animals stretched upon the outside walls of his cabin, so that visitors to his boat may be led to imagine that he is an industrious and legitimate trapper, of high-toned feelings, and one "who wouldn't stick a man's hog for no money." If there be a religious meeting in the vicinity of the shanty-boat, the whole family attend it with alacrity, and prove that their BELIEF in honest doctrines is a very different thing from their daily PRACTICE of the same. They join with vigor in the shoutings, and their "amens" drown all others, while their excitable natures, worked upon by the wild eloquence of the backwoods' preacher, seem to give evidence of a firm desire to lead Christian lives, and the spectator is often deceived by their apparent earnestness and sincerity. Such ideas are, however, quickly dispelled by a visit to a shanty-boat, and a glimpse of these people "at home."
The great fleet of shanty-boats does not begin to reach New Orleans until the approach of spring. Once there, they find a market for the skins of the animals trapped during the winter, and these being sold for cash, the trapper disposes of his boat for a nominal sum to some one in need of cheap firewood, and purchasing lower-deck tickets for Cairo, or Pittsburgh, at from four to six dollars per head, places his family upon an up-river steamer, and returns with the spring birds to the Ohio River, to rent a small piece of ground for the season, where he can "make a crop of corn," and raise some cabbage and potatoes, upon which to subsist until it be time to repeat his southern migration.
In this descent of the river, many persons, who have clubbed together to meet the expenses of a shanty-boat life for the first time, and who are of a sentimental turn of mind, look upon the voyage as a romantic era in their lives. Visions of basking in the sunlight, feasting, and sleeping, dance before their benighted eyes; for they are not all of the low, ignorant class I have described. Professors, teachers, musicians, all drift at times down the river; and one is often startled at finding in the apparently rough crew men who seem worthy of a better fate. To these the river experiences are generally new, and the ribald jokes and low river slang, with the ever-accompanying cheap corn-whiskey and the nightly riots over cutthroat euchre, must be at first a revelation. Hundreds of these low fellows will swear to you that the world owes them a living, and that they mean to have it; that they are gentlemen, and therefore cannot work. They pay a good price for their indolence, as the neglect of their craft and their loose ideas of navigation seldom fail to bring them to grief before they even reach the Mississippi at Cairo. Their heavy, flat-bottomed boat gets impaled upon a snag or the sharp top of a sawyer; and as the luckless craft spins round with the current, a hole is punched through the bottom, the water rushes in and takes possession, driving the inexperienced crew to the little boat usually carried in tow for any emergency.
Into this boat the shanty-men hastily store their guns, whiskey, and such property as they can save from the wreck, and making for the shore, hold a council of war.
There, in the swift current, lies the centre of their hopes, quickly settling in the deep water, soon to be seen no more. The fact now seems to dawn upon them for the first time that a little seamanship is needed even in descending a river, that with a little care their Noah's Ark might have been kept afloat, and the treacherous "bob sawyer" avoided. This trap for careless sailors is a tree, with its roots held in the river's bottom, and its broken top bobbing up and down with the undulations of the current. Boatmen give it the euphonious title of "bob sawyer" because of the bobbing and sawing motions imparted to it by the pulsations of the water.
Destitute of means, these children of circumstance resolve never to say die. Their ship has gone down, but their pride is left, and they will not go home till they have "done" the river; and so, repairing to the first landing, they ship in pairs upon freighters descending the stream. Some months later they return to their homes with seedy habiliments but an enlarged experience, sadder but wiser men.
And so the great flood of river life goes on, and out of this annual custom of shanty-boat migration a peculiar phase of American character is developed, a curious set of educated and illiterate nomads, as restless and unprofitable a class of inhabitants as can be found in all the great West.
After leaving my camp near Blennerhasset's Island, on December 9, the features of the landscape changed. The hills lost their altitude, and seemed farther back from the water, while the river itself appeared to widen. Snow squalls filled the air, and the thought of a comfortable camping-ground for the night was a welcome one. About dusk I retired into the first creek above Letart's Landing, on the left bank of the Ohio, where I spent the night. The next forenoon I entered a region of salt wells, with a number of flourishing little towns scattered here and there upon the borders of the stream. One of these, called Hartford City, had a well eleven hundred and seventy feet in depth. From another well in the vicinity both oil and salt-water were raised by means of a steam-pump. These oil-wells were half a mile back of the river. Coal-mines were frequently passed in this neighborhood on both sides of the Ohio.
After dark I was fortunate enough to find a camping-place in a low swamp on the right bank of the stream, in the vicinity of which was a gloomy-looking, deserted house. I climbed the slippery bank with my cooking kit upon my back, and finding some refuse wood in what had once been a kitchen, made a fire, and enjoyed the first meal I had been able to cook in camp since the voyage was commenced.
Cold winds whistled round me all night, but the snug nest in my boat was warm and cheerful, for I lighted my candle, and by its dear flame made up my daily "log." There were, of course, some inconveniences in regard to lighting so low-studded a chamber. It was important to have a candle of not more than two inches in length, so that the flame should not go too near the roof of my domicile. Then the space being small, my literary labors were of necessity performed in a reclining position; while lying upon my side, my shoulder almost touched the carlines of the hatch above.
Saturday was as raw and blustering as the previous day, so hastily breakfasting upon the remains of my supper,—COLD chocolate, COLD corned beef, and COLD crackers,—I determined to get into a milder region as soon as possible.
As I rowed down the stream, the peculiar appearance of the Barnegat sneak-box attracted the attention of the men on board the coal-barges, shanty-boats, &c., and they invariably crowded to the side I passed, besieging me with questions of every description, such as, "Say, stranger, where did you steal that pumpkin-seed looking boat from?" "How much did she cost, any way?" "Ain't ye afeard some steamboat will swash the life out of her?" On several occasions I raised the water- apron, and explained how the little sneak-box shed the water that washed over her bows, when these rough fellows seemed much impressed with the excellent qualities of the boat, and frankly acknowledged that "it might pay a fellow to steal one if there was a good show for such a trick."
At three o'clock P. M. I passed the town of Guyandot, which is situated on the left bank of the Ohio, at its junction with the Big Guyandot. Three miles below Guyandot is the growing city of Huntington, the Ohio River terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, which has a total length of four hundred and sixty-five miles, exclusive of six private branches. The Atlantic coast terminus is on the James River, Chesapeake Bay.
The snow squalls now became so frequent, and the atmosphere was so chilly and penetrating, that I was driven from the swashy waves of the troubled Ohio, and eagerly sought refuge in Fourfold Creek, about a league below Huntington, where the high, wooded banks of the little tributary offered me protection and rest.
At an early hour the next morning I was conscious of a change of temperature. It was growing colder. A keen wind whistled through the tree-tops. I was alarmed at the prospect of having my boat fastened in the creek by the congealing of its waters, so I pushed out upon the Ohio and hastened towards a warmer climate as fast as oars, muscles, and a friendly current would carry me. The shanty-boatmen had informed me that the Ohio might freeze up in a single night, in places, even as near its mouth as Cairo. I did not, however, feel so much alarmed in regard to the river as I did about its tributaries. The Ohio was not likely to remain sealed up for more than a few days at a time, but the creeks, my harbors of refuge, my lodging-places, might remain frozen up for a long time, and put me to serious inconvenience.
About ten o'clock A. M. the duck-boat crossed the mouth of the Big Sandy River, the limit of Virginia, and I floated along the shores of the grand old state of Kentucky on the left, while the immense state of Ohio still skirted the right bank of the river.
The agricultural features of the Ohio valley had been increasing in attractiveness with the descent of the stream. The high bottom-lands of the valley exhibited signs of careful cultivation, while substantial brick houses here and there dotted the landscape. Interspersed with these were the inevitable log-cabins and dingy hovels, speaking plainly of the poverty and shiftlessness of some of the inhabitants.
At four P. M. I could endure the cold no longer, and when a beautiful creek with wooded shores, which divided fine farms, opened invitingly before me on the Kentucky side, I quickly entered it, and moored the sneak-box to an ancient sycamore whose trunk rose out of the water twelve feet from shore. I was not a moment too soon in leaving the wide river, for as I quietly supped on my cold bread and meat, which needed no better sauce than my daily increasing appetite to make it tempting, the wind increased to a tempest, and screeched and howled through the forest with such wintry blasts that I was glad to creep under my hatch before dark.
On Monday, December 13, the violent wind storm continuing, I remained all day in my box, writing letters and watching the scuds flying over the tops of high trees. At noon a party of hunters, with a small pack of hounds, came abruptly upon my camp. Though boys only, they carried shot-guns, and expectorated enough tobacco-juice to pass for the type of western manhood. They chatted pleasantly round my boat, though each sentence that fell from their lips was emphasized by its accompanying oath. I asked them the name of the creek, when one replied, "Why, boss, you don't call this a CREEK, do you? Why, there is twenty foot of water in it. It's the Tiger River, and comes a heap of a long way " Another said, "Look here, cap'n, I wouldn't travel alone in that 'ere little skiff, for when you're in camp any feller might put a ball into you from a high bank." "Yes," added another, "there is plenty o' folks along the river that would do it, too."
As my camp had become known, I acted upon the friendly hint of the boy-hunters, and took my departure the next day at an early hour, following the left bank of the river, which afforded me a lee shore. As I dashed through the swashy waves, with the apron of the boat securely set to keep the water from wetting my back, the sun in all its grandeur parted the clouds and lighted up the landscape until everything partook of its brightness. This was the second time in two weeks that the God of Day had asserted his supremacy, and his advent was fully appreciated.
Two miles below Portsmouth, Ohio, I encountered a solitary voyager in a skiff, shooting mallards about the mouths of the creeks, and having discovered that he was a gentleman, I intrusted my mail to his keeping, and pushed on to a little creek beyond Rome, where, thanks to good fortune, some dry wood was discovered. A bright blaze was soon lighting up the darkness of the thicket into which I had drawn my boat, and the hot supper, now cooked in camp, and served without ceremony, was duly relished.
The deck of the boat was covered with a thin coating of ice, and as the wind went down the temperature continued to fall until six o'clock in the morning, when I considered it unsafe to linger a moment longer in the creek, the surface of which was already frozen over, and the ice becoming thicker every hour. An oar served to break a passage-way from the creek to the Ohio, which I descended in a blustering wind, being frequently driven to seek shelter under the lee afforded by points of land.
At sunset I reached Maysville, where the celebrated Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky backwoods life, once lived; and as the wind began to fall, I pulled into a fine creek about four miles below the village, having made twenty-nine miles under most discouraging circumstances. The river was here, as elsewhere, lighted by small hand-lanterns hung upon posts. The lights were, however, so dull, and, where the channel was not devious, at such long intervals, that they only added to the gloom.
As the wind generally rose and fell with the sun, it became necessary to adopt a new plan to expedite my voyage, and the river being usually smooth at dawn of day, an early start was an imperative duty. At four o'clock in the morning the duck-boat was under way, her captain cheered by the hope of arriving in Cincinnati, the great city of the Ohio valley, by sunset. I plied my oars vigorously all day, and when darkness settled upon the land, was rewarded for my exertions by having my little craft shoot under the first bridge that connects Cincinnati with Kentucky. Here steamers, coal-barges, and river craft of every description lined the Ohio as well as the Kentucky shore. Iron cages filled with burning coals were suspended from cranes erected upon flatboats for the purpose of lighting the river, which was most effectually done, the unwonted brilliancy giving to the busy scene a strange weirdness, and making a picture never to be forgotten.
The swift current now carried me under the suspension-bridge which connects Cincinnati and Covington, and my boat entered the dark area below, when suddenly the river was clouded in snow, as fierce squalls came up the stream, and I eagerly scanned the high, dark banks to find some inlet to serve as harbor for the night. It was very dark, and I hugged the Kentucky shore as closely as I dared. Suddenly a gleam of light, like a break in a fog-bank, opened upon my craft, and the dim outlines of the sides of a gorge in the high coast caught my eye. It was not necessary to row into the cleft in the hillside, for a fierce blast of the tempest blew me into the little creek; nor was my progress stayed until the sneak-box was driven several rods into its dark interior, and entangled in the branches of a fallen tree.
In the blinding snowfall it was impossible to discern anything upon the steep banks of the little creek which had fairly forced its hospitality upon me; so, carefully fastening my painter to the fallen tree, I hastily disappeared below my hatch. During the night the mercury fell to six degrees above zero, but my quarters were so comfortable that little inconvenience from the cold was experienced until morning, when I attempted to make my toilet with an open hatch. Then I discovered the unpleasant fact that my boat was securely frozen up in the waters of the creek! Being without a stove, and finding that my canned provisions—not having been wrapped in several coverings like their owner, and having no power to convert oxygen into fuel for warmth—were solidifying, I locked my hatch, and scrambled up the high banks to seek the comforts of that civilization which I had so gladly left behind when I embarked at a point five hundred miles further up the river, thinking as I went what a contrary mortal man was, myself among the number, for I was as eager now to find my human brother as I had been to turn my back upon him a short time before. The poetry of solitude was frozen into prose, and the low temperature around me made life under a roof seem attractive for the time being, though, judging from the general aspect of things, there was not much to look forward to, in either a social or comfortable light, in my immediate vicinity. I was, however, too cold and too hungry to be dainty, and felt like Dickens's Mrs. Bloss, that I "must have nourishment."
A turnpike crossed the ravine a few rods from my boat, and the tollgate-keeper informed me that I was frozen up in Pleasant Run, near which were several small houses. Upon application for "boarding" accommodations I discovered that breakfast at Pleasant Run was a movable feast, that some had already taken it at seven A. M., and that others would not have it ready till three P. M. This was anything but encouraging to a cold and hungry man; but I at length obtained admission to the house of a German tailor, and, explaining my condition, offered to pay him liberally for the privilege of becoming his guest until the cold snap was over. He examined me closely, and having made, as it were, a mental inventory of my features, dress, &c., exclaimed, "Mine friend, in dese times nobody knows who's which. I say, sar, nobody knows who's what. Fellers land here and eats mine grub, and den shoves off dere poats, and nevar says 'tank you, sar,' for mine grub. Since de confederate war all men is skamps, I does fully pelieve. I fights twenty-doo pattles for de Union, nots for de monish, but because I likes de free government; but it is imbossible to feeds all de beebles what lands at Pleasant Run."
I assured this patriotic tailor and adopted citizen that I would pay him well for the trouble of boarding me, but he answered in a surly way:
"Dat's vat dey all says. It's to be all pay, but dey eats up de sour- crout and de fresh pork, and drinks de coffee, and ven I looks for de monish, de gentlemens has disappeared down de rivver. Now you don't looks as much rascal as some of dem does, and as it ish cold to-day, I vill make dish corntract mid you. You shall stay here till de cold goes away, and you shall hab de pest I've got for twenty-five cents a meal, but you shall pays me de twenty-five cents a meal down in advance, beforehand."
"Here is a character," I thought, "a new type to study, and perhaps, after all, being frozen up in Pleasant Run may not be a fact to regret."
My landlord's proposition was at once accepted, and I offered to pay him for three meals in advance, to which he replied, "Dat dree pays at one time was not in de corntract." "You have forgotten one point," I said, addressing him as he led me to the kitchen, where "mine frau" was up to her elbows in work. "And what ish dat?" he asked, rather suspiciously eying me. "You have not fixed a price for my lodgings." "De use of de peddothes costs me notting, so I never charges for de lodgings wen de boarder WASHES himself every day," answered mine host. Having settled this point, and ordered his wife, in commanding terms, "to gib dish man his breakfast," he withdrew. The woman treated me very kindly, apologizing for her husband's exacting demands by assuring me that "Nobody knows WHO'S when nowadays. Seems as if everybody had got 'moralized by de war." The coffee the good lady made me, though thoroughly boiled, was excellent, and I complimented her upon it. "Yes," she replied, "my coffee IS coffee. De 'Merican beeble forgets de coffee wen dey makes it, and puts all water. Oh, wishy- washy is 'Merican coffee. It's like peas and beans ground up. De German beebles won't drink de stuff."
A generous repast of sausage, fresh pork, good bread, butter, and coffee, was placed before me, when the tailor returned with darkened brow, and rudely demanded the whereabouts of my boat. "I looks everywhere," he said, "and don't finds de poat. Hab you one poat, or hab you not?" I carefully described the exact location of the sneak- box in the rear of the tollgate-house, when he hastily disappeared. The old lady and I had fully discussed the wishy-washy coffee question, when mine host returned. This time he wore a pleasant countenance, and took me into his shop, where he introduced me to three of his apprentices. At night I was given a bed in an unfinished attic, under a shingled roof, which was not even ceiled, so the constant draughts of air whistling through the interstices overhead and at the sides of my apartment, kept up a ventilation more perfect than was desirable; and I should have suffered from the cold had it not been for my German coverlet, which was a feather-bed about twenty inches in thickness. It, of course, half smothered me, but there seemed no choice between that and freezing to death, so I patiently accepted my fate.
[A night under a German coverlet.]
THE next day being Saturday, and the mercury still standing at seven degrees above zero, I walked to Covington, and crossed the suspension- bridge to Cincinnati. It was the season of the year when the vast pork-packing establishments were in full blast, and the amount of work done spoke well for western enterprise.
Pork-raising and pork-packing is one of the great industries of the Ohio valley, and the Cincinnati and Louisville merchants have control of the largest portion of the business growing out of it.
When a stranger visits the pork-packing establishments of Cincinnati he marvels at the immensity and celerity of the various manipulations, which commence with the killing of a squealing pig, and the transformation of his hogship, in a few minutes, into a well-cleaned animal, hanging up to cool in a store-room, from which he is taken a little later and immediately cut up and packed in barrels for market. The reader may have a distaste for statistics, but I cannot impress upon him the magnitude of this great industry without giving a few reliable figures.
The number of hogs packed in Cincinnati during the past twenty-one years, from 1853 to 1875, was 9,242,972. While Cincinnati was at work on one season's crop of pork of 632,302 pigs, her rival, Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan, killed and packed in the same time her crop of 2,501,285 animals.
The "Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Cincinnati Price Current," published while the author has been writing this chapter, shows what our country can do in supplying meat for foreign as well as home markets. The states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, contributed to the packing establishments between November 1, 1877, and March 1, 1878, during the winter season of six months, 6,505,446 hogs; and during the summer season, from March 1 to November 1, 2,543,120 animals,—making a one year's total of 9,048,566 pigs, which averaged a net weight, when dressed, of two hundred and twenty- six pounds. Thus the weight of meat alone packed in one year was 2,044,975,916 pounds. Add to this the crop of California, Oregon, and Canada of the same year, and the total swells to 12,301,589 hogs, duly registered as having been killed by the pork-packers, and there still remain uncounted all the pigs killed in thirty-eight states by farmers for their own and neighbors' consumption.
This annual crop of pork a jocund professor once described as "a prodigious mass of heavy carburetted hydrogen gas and scrofula;" but the chemists of our day would more properly stigmatize it as a vast quantity of Luzic, Myristic, Palmitic, Margaric, and Stearic acids in combination with glycerine and fibre.
A western savant, having investigated the parasites existing in hogs, affirms that in western pork, eight animals out of every one hundred are affected by that muscle-boring pest so dangerous to those who have eaten the infected meat, and so well known to all students as the Trichina spiralis. The distinguished writer Letheby says of this parasite: "As found in the human subject (after death) it is usually in the encysted state, when it has passed beyond its dangerous condition, and has become harmless. In most cases, when thus discovered, there is no record of its action, and therefore it was once thought to be an innocent visitor; but we now know that while it was free, (that is, before nature had barricaded it up in the little cyst,) its presence was the cause of frightful disorders, killing about fifty per centum of its victims in terrible agony. The young worms having hatched in the body of man, migrate to the numerous muscles, causing the most excruciating pain, so that the patient, fearing to move his inflamed muscles, would lie motionless upon his back, and if he did not die in this state of the disorder, nature came to the rescue and imprisoned the creature by surrounding it with a fibrous cyst, where it lives for years, being ready at any moment to acquire activity when it is swallowed and released from its cell."
Another parasite found in the muscles of the pig is known as the Cysticercus cellulosus, and the animals afflicted by it are said to have the measles. This larva of the tapeworm exists in the pig in little sacs not larger than a pin's head, and can be seen by the naked eye. The strong brine of the packer does not kill them, and I have known them to be taken alive from a boiled ham. The great heat of frying alone renders them harmless. When partially-cooked, measly pork is eaten by man, the gastric juice of the stomach dissolves the membranous sac which contains the living larva, and the animal soon passes into the intestines, where, clinging by its hooks, it holds on with wonderful tenacity, rapidly sending out joint after joint, until the perfect tapeworm sometimes attains a length of thirty feet.
Let us hope, for the credit of humanity, that these facts are not generally known, for man has ills enough without incurring the risks of such a diet. If pork must form a staple, let the genealogical tree of his pigship be carefully sought after, and let the would-be consumer ask the question considered so important in a certain river- bounded city of Pennsylvania, "Who was his grandfather?"
In the year 1800 Cincinnati was a little pioneer settlement of seven hundred and fifty men, women, and children. Her census of 1880 will not fall far short of a quarter of a million. She contributes more than her share to feed the world, and is, strange to say, as celebrated for the terpsichorean art as for her pork. Even Boston must yield her the palm as a musical centre, and give to the inhabitants of the once rough western city the credit due them for their versatility of talent, and the ease with which they render Beethoven, or "take a turn in pork," as occasion may demand, many of the music-loving citizens being engaged at times in a commercial way with this staple.
Having obtained at a bookstore a copy of Lloyd's Map of the Mississippi River, I returned to the tailor's, where I was greeted in the most kindly manner, and informed that the young lady of the house, the only daughter of my host, had voluntarily left home to visit some city relations, that I might occupy her comfortably furnished room, with the open fireplace, which was now filled with blazing wood, and sending forth a genial glow into the heavily-curtained apartment. When I protested against this promotion in the social scale, and refused to deprive the young lady of her room, I was informed that she knew "WHO WAS WHO," and had insisted upon leaving her room that a gentleman might be properly entertained in it. From this time my now agreeable host stoutly refused to accept payment in advance for my daily rations, while, with his family and apprentices, he took up his quarters each evening in my new room, relating his experiences during the war, and giving me many original ideas.
It grew warmer, but the ice of the creek in which my boat lay did not melt. The water was, however, falling, and it became necessary to cut out the sneak-box, and slide her over the ice into the unfrozen Ohio. My host had become alarmed, and kept an anxious eye upon the boat. "De peoples knows de poat is here, and some of dem hab told others about it. If you don't hide her down de rivver to-night, she will be stolen by de rivver thieves." I was thus forced to leave these kind people, who about noon escorted me to the duck-boat, and showered upon me their best wishes for a prosperous voyage. It was a glorious afternoon, and the sun poured all his wealth of light and cheerfulness upon the valley.
Late in the day I passed the mouth of the Big Miami River. Indiana was on the right, while Kentucky still skirted the left bank of the river. The state of Ohio had furnished the Ohio River with a margin for four hundred and seventy-five miles. The Little Miami River joins the Ohio six miles above Cincinnati; the Big Miami enters it twenty miles below the city. These streams flow through rich farming regions, but they are not navigable. After passing the town of Aurora, which is six miles below the Big Miami, I caught sight of the mouth of a creek, whose thickets of trees, in the gloom of the fast approaching night, almost hid from view the outlines of a forlorn-looking shanty-boat. Clouds of smoke, with the bright glare of the fire, shot out of the rusty stove-pipe in the roof, but I soon discovered that it was the abode of one who attended strictly to his own business, and expected the same behavior from his neighbors. So, saying good evening to this man of solitary habits, I quickly rowed past his floating hermitage into the darkness of the neighboring swamp. I soon put my own home in order, ate my supper, and retired, feeling happy in the thought that I should before long reach a climate where my out-door life would not be attended with so many inconveniences.
The next day a milder but damper atmosphere greeted me. By noon I had rowed twenty-two miles, and was off the mouth of Big Bone Lick Creek, in Kentucky. Two miles from the mouth of this creek are some springs, the waters of which are charged with sulphur and salt. The most interesting feature of this locality was the fact that here were buried in one vast bed the fossil bones of "The Mastodon and the Arctic Elephant." Formerly these prehistoric relics of a departed fauna were scattered over the surface of the earth. The first mention of this locality was made, I think, by a French explorer in 1649. It is again referred to by a British subject in 1765. A rare copy of a private journal kept by this early explorer of the Ohio, Colonel George Croghan, was published in G. W. Featherstonhaugh's "American Journal of Geology," of December, 1831. This monthly publication ended with its first year's existence. Only five copies of this number were known to be in print three years since, when Professor Thomas, of Mount Holly, New Jersey, encouraged the issue of a reprint of one hundred copies, from which some of our public libraries have been supplied.
This Colonel George Croghan, in company with deputies from the Seneca, Shawnesse, and Delaware nations, left Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), in two bateaux, on the 15th of May, 1765, bound on a mission to the Indian tribes of the Ohio valley. On the 29th of the month the expedition reached the Little Miami River. Colonel Croghan there commences his account of the Big Bone Lick region. He says: "May 30th we passed the Great Miami River, about thirty miles from the little river of that name, and in the EVENING arrived at the place WHERE THE ELEPHANTS' BONES ARE FOUND, when we encamped, intending to take a view of the place next morning. This day we came about seventy miles. The country on both sides level, and rich bottoms, well watered. May 31st. Early in the morning we went to the great Lick, where those bones are only found, about four miles from the river, on the south-east side. In our way we passed through a fine-timbered, clear wood: we passed into a large road, which the buffaloes have beaten, spacious enough for two wagons to go abreast, and leading straight into the Lick. It appears that there are vast quantities of these bones lying five or six feet under ground, which we discovered in the bank at the edge of the Lick. We found here two tusks above six feet long; we carried one, with some other bones, to our boat, and set off."
In relation to the aboriginal inhabitants of the country of the Ohio valley, it is interesting to note that the "Six Nations" held six of the gates to New York, and were strong because they were united, for Colonel Croghan's enumeration of them shows that they had only two thousand one hundred and twenty fighting-men, and were never supported by more than about two thousand warriors from tributary tribes, when at war with the whites.
That the Iroquois, with their adopted children, have not lost in numbers up to the present day, is a curious fact. About six thousand of the descendants of the "Six Nations" are at Forestville, Wisconsin, on government reservations; and the official agent reports that nearly two thousand of them can read and write; that they have twenty-nine day schools, and two manual-labor schools; that they cultivate their lands so diligently that they pay all the expenses of their living. They are reported as advancing in church discipline, growing in temperance; and are making rapid progress towards a complete civilization.
These six thousand, with other descendants of the Iroquois in Canada, will no doubt make up a total equal in number to the members of the old "Indian Confederacy," so graphically pictured in the glowing pages of Mr. Francis Parkman, the reliable historian, who has given us such vivid descriptions of the French rule in America as have called forth the unqualified praise of students of American history on both sides of the Atlantic.
Having rowed forty-three miles in twelve hours, I reached the town ofVevay, Indiana, which was first settled by a Swiss colony, to whomCongress granted lands for the purpose of encouraging grape-culture.Keeping close under the banks of the river, I entered a little creek amile below the village, where a night, restful as usual, was passed.
On Tuesday I rose with the moon, though it was as late as five o'clock in the morning; but, although fertile farms were stretched along the river's bank, and the land gave every sign of careful culture, it was anything but an enjoyable day, as the rain fell in almost uninterrupted showers from eight o'clock A. M. until dusk, when I was glad to find an inviting creek on the Kentucky shore, about one mile below Bethlehem, and had the great satisfaction of logging thirty- eight miles as the day's run.
It was necessary to make an early start the next day, as I must run the falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky, or make a portage round them. The river was enveloped in fog; but I followed the shore closely, hour after hour, until the sun dispelled the mists, and my little duck-boat ran in among the barges at the great Kentucky city. Here, at Louisville, is the only barrier to safe navigation on the Ohio River. These so-called Falls of the Ohio are in fact rapids which almost disappear when the river is at its full height. At such times, steam-boats, with skilful pilots aboard, safely follow the channel, which avoids the rocks of the river. During the low stage of the water, navigation is entirely suspended. The fall of the current is twenty-three feet in two miles. To avoid this descent, in low water, and to allow vessels to ascend the river at all times, a canal was excavated along the left shore of the rapids from Louisville to Shippingsport, a distance of two miles and a half. It was a stupendous enterprise, as the passage was cut almost the entire distance through the solid rock, and in some places to the great depth of forty feet.
On the 25th of September, 1816, when Louisville had a population of three thousand inhabitants, her first steamboat, the Washington, left the young city for New Orleans. A second trip was commenced by the Washington on March 3, 1817. The whole time consumed by the voyage from Louisville to New Orleans, including the return trip, was forty- one days. The now confident Captain Shreve, of the Washington, predicted that steamboats would be built which could make the passage to New Orleans in ten days. I have been a passenger on a steamboat which ascended the strong currents of the river from New Orleans to Louisville in five days; while the once pioneer hamlet now boasts a population exceeding one hundred thousand souls.
As the bow of my little craft grounded upon the city levee, a crowd of good-natured men gathered round to examine her. From them I ascertained that the descent of the rapids could not be made without a pilot; and as the limited quarters of the sneak-box would not allow any addition to her passenger-list, a portage round the falls became a necessity. The canal was not to be thought of as it would have been a troublesome matter, without special passes from some official, to have obtained the privilege of passing through with so small a boat. The crowd cheerfully lifted the sneak-box into an express-wagon, and fifteen minutes after reaching Louisville I was en route for Portland, mailing letters as I passed through the city. The portage was made in about an hour. At sunset the little boat was launched in the Ohio, and I felt that I had returned to an old friend. The expressman entered with entire sympathy into the voyage, and could not be prevailed upon to accept more than a dollar and a half for transporting the boat and her captain four miles.
When night came on, and no friendly creek offered me shelter, I pushed the boat into a soft, muddy flat of willows, which fringed a portion of the Kentucky shore, where there was just enough water to float the sneak-box. The passing steamers during the night sent swashy waves into my lair, which kept me in constant fear of a ducking, and gave me anything but a peaceful night. This was, however, all forgotten the next morning, when the startling discovery was made that the river had fallen during the night and left me in a quagmire, from which it seemed at first impossible to extricate myself.
The boat was imbedded in the mud, which was so soft and slimy that it would not support my weight when I attempted to step upon it for the purpose of pushing my little craft into the water, which had receded only a few feet from my camp. I tried pushing With my oak oar; but it sunk into the mire almost out of sight. Then a small watch-tackle was rigged, one block fastened to the boat, the other to the limb of a willow which projected over the water. The result of this was a successful downward movement of the willow, but the boat remained in statu quo, the soft mud holding it as though it possessed the sucking powers of a cuttlefish.
I could not reach the firm shore, for the willow brush would not support my weight. There was no assistance to be looked for from fellow-voyagers, as the river-craft seemed to follow the channel of the opposite shore; and my camp could not be seen from the river, as I had taken pains to hide myself in the thicket of young willows from all curious eyes. There was no hope that my voice would penetrate to the other side of the stream, neither could I reach the water beyond the soft ooze. Being well provisioned, however, it would be an easy matter to await the rise of the river; and if no friendly freshet sent me the required assistance, the winds would harden the ooze in a few days so that it would bear my weight, and enable me to escape from my bonds of mud.
While partaking of a light breakfast, an idea suddenly presented itself to my mind. I had frequently built crossways over treacherous swamps. Why not mattress the muddy flat? Standing upon the deck of my boat, I grasped every twig and bough of willow I could reach, and making a mattress of them, about two feet square and a few inches thick, on the surface of the mud at the stern of my craft, I placed upon it the hatch-cover of my boat. Standing upon this, the sneak-box was relieved of my weight, and by dint of persevering effort the after part was successful]y lifted, and the heavy burden slowly worked out of its tenacious bed, and moved two or three feet nearer the water. By shifting the willow mattress nearer the boat, which was now ON the surface of the mud, and not IN it, my floating home was soon again upon the current, and its captain had a new experience, which, though dearly bought, would teach him to avoid in future a camp on a soft flat when a river was falling.
A foggy day followed my departure from the unfortunate camp of willows; but through the mist I caught glimpses of the fine lands of the Kentucky farmers, with the grand old trees shading their comfortable homes. In the drizzle I had passed French's Creek, and after dark ran upon a stony beach, where, high and dry upon the bank, was a shanty-boat, which had been converted into a landing-house, and was occupied by two men who received the freight left there by passing steamers. The locality was six miles below Brandenburg, Kentucky, and was known as "Richardson's Landing." Having rowed forty miles since morning, I "turned in" soon after drawing my boat upon the shelving strand, anticipating a quiet night.
At midnight a loud noise, accompanied with bright flashes of light, warned me of the approach of a steamboat. She soon after ran her bow hard on to the beach, within a few feet of my boat. Though the rain was falling in torrents, the passengers crowded upon the upper deck to examine the snow-white, peculiarly shaped craft, or "skiff" as they called it, which lay upon the bank, little suspecting that her owner was snugly stowed beneath her deck. I suddenly threw up the hatch and sat upright, while the strong glare of light from the steamer's furnaces brought out every detail of the boat's interior.
This sudden apparition struck the crowd with surprise, and, as is usual upon such an occasion in western America, the whole company showered a fire of raillery and "chaff" upon me, to which, on account of the heavy rain, I could not reply, but, dropping backward into my bed, drew the hatch into its place. The good-natured crowd would not permit me to escape so easily. Calling the entire ship's company from the state-rooms and cabins to join them, they used every artifice in their power to induce me to show my head above the deck of my boat. One shouted, "Here, you deck-hand, don't cut that man's rope; it's mean to steal a fellow's painter!" Another cried, "Don't put that heavy plank against that little skiff!" Suspecting their game, however, I kept under cover during the fifteen minutes' stay of the boat, when, moving off; they all shouted a jolly farewell, which mingled in the darkness with the hoarse whistle of the steamer, while the night air echoed with cries of; "Snug as a bug in a rug;" "I never seed the like afore;" "He'll git used to livin'in a coffin afore he needs one," &c.
The reader who may have looked heretofore upon swamps and gloomy creeks as too lonely for camping-grounds, may now appreciate the necessity for selecting such places, and understand why a voyager prefers the security of the wilderness to the annoying curiosity of his fellow-man.
The rains of the past two days had swollen the Kentucky River, which enters the Ohio above Louisville, as well as the Salt River, which I had passed twenty miles below that city, besides many other branches, so that the main stream was now rapidly rising. After leaving Richardson's Landing, the rain continued to fall, and as each tributary, affected by the freshet, poured logs, fallen trees, fence- rails, stumps from clearings, and even occasionally a small frame shanty, into the Ohio, there was a floating raft of these materials miles in length. Sometimes an unlucky shanty-boat was caught in an eddy by the mass of floating timber, and at once becoming an integral portion of the whole, would float with the great raft for two or three days. The owners, being in the mean time unable to free themselves from their prison-like surroundings, made the best of the blockade, and their fires burned all the brighter, while the enlivening music of the fiddle, and the hilarity induced by frequent potions of corn whiskey, with the inevitable games of cards, made all "merry as a marriage bell," as they floated down the river.
In the evening, a little creek below Alton was reached, which sheltered me during the night. Soon the rain ceased, and the stars shone kindly upon my lonely camp. I left the creek at half-past four o'clock in the morning. The water had risen two feet and a half in ten hours, and the broad river was in places covered from shore to shore with drift stuff; which made my course a devious one, and the little duck-boat had many a narrow escape in my attempts to avoid the floating mass. The booming of guns along the shore reminded me that it was Christmas, and, in imagination, I pictured to myself the many happy families in the valley enjoying their Christmas cheer. The contrast between their condition and mine was great, for I could not even find enough dry wood to cook my simple camp-fare.
An hour before sunset, while skirting the Indiana shore, I passed a little village called Batesville, and soon after came to the mouth of a crooked creek, out of which, borne on the flood of a freshet, came a long, narrow line of drift stuff. Just within the mouth of the creek, in a deep indenture of the high bank, a shanty-boat was snugly lashed to the trees. A young man stood in the open doorway of the cabin, washing dishes, and as I passed he kindly wished me a "Merry Christmas," inviting me on board. He eagerly inspected the sneak-box, and pronounced it one of the prettiest "tricks" afloat. "How my father and brother would like to see you and your boat!" exclaimed he. "Can't you tie up here, just under yonder p'int on the bank? There's an eddy there, and the drift won't work in enough to trouble you."
The invitation so kindly given was accepted, and with the assistance of my new acquaintance my boat was worked against the strong current into a curve of the bank, and there securely fastened. I set to work about my house-keeping cares, and had my cabin comfortably arranged for the night, when I was hailed from the shanty-boat to "come aboard." Entering the rough cabin, a surprise greeted me, for a table stood in the centre of the room, covered with a clean white cloth, and groaning under the weight of such a variety of appetizing dishes as I had not seen for many a day.
"I thought," said the boy, "that you hadn't had much Christmas to-day, being as you're away from your folks; and we had a royal dinner, and there's lots left fur you—so help yourself." He then explained that his father and brother had gone to a shooting-match on the other side of the river; and when I expressed my astonishment at the excellent fare, which, upon closer acquaintance, proved to be of a dainty nature (game and delicate pastry making a menu rather peculiar for a shanty- boat), he informed me that his brother had been first cook on a big passenger steamer, and had received good wages; but their mother died, and their father married a second time, and—Here the young fellow paused, evidently considering how much of their private life he should show to a stranger. "Well," he continued, "our new mother liked cities better than flatboats, and father's a good quiet man, who likes to live in peace with every one, so he lets mother live in Arkansas, and he stays on the shanty-boat. We boys joined him, fur he's a good old fellow, and we have all that's going. We git plenty of cat-fish, buffalo-fish, yellow perch, and bass, and sell them at the little towns along the river. Then in summer we hire a high flat ashore,—not a flatboat,—I mean a bit of land along the river, and raise a crop of corn, 'taters, and cabbage. We have plenty of shooting, and don't git much fever 'n ager."
I had rowed fifty-three miles that day, and did ample justice to the Christmas dinner on the flatboat. The father and brother joined us in the evening, and gave me much good advice in regard to river navigation. The rain fell heavily before midnight, and they insisted that I should share one of their beds in the boat; but as small streams of water were trickling through the roof of the shanty, and my little craft was water-tight, I declined the kindly offer, and bade them good-night.
The next day being Sunday, I again visited my new acquaintances upon the shanty-boat, and gathered from their varied experiences much of the river's lore. The rain continued, accompanied with lightning and thunder, during the entire day, so that Monday's sun was indeed welcome; and with kind farewells on all sides I broke camp and descended the current with the now almost continuous raft of drift- wood. For several hours a sewing-machine repair-shop and a photographic gallery floated with me.
The creeks were now so swollen from the heavy rains, and so full of drift-wood, that my usual retreat into some creek seemed cut off; so I ran under the sheltered side of "Three Mile Island," below Newburg, Indiana. The climate was daily improving, and I no longer feared an ice blockade; but a new difficulty arose. The heavy rafts of timber threatened to shut me in my camp. At dusk, all might be open water; but at break of day "a change came o'er the spirit of my dream," and heavy blockades of timber rafts made it no easy matter to escape. There were times when, shut in behind these barriers, I looked out upon the river with envious eyes at the steamboats steadily plodding up stream against the current, keeping free of the rafts by the skill of their pilots; and thoughts of the genius and perseverance of the inventors of these peculiar craft crowded my mind.
In these days of successful application of mechanical inventions, but few persons can realize the amount of distrust and opposition against which a Watts or a Fulton had to contend while forcing upon an illiberal and unappreciative public the valuable results of their busy brains and fertile genius. It is well for us who now enjoy these blessings,—the utilized ideas of a lifetime of unrequited labors,—to look back upon the epoch of history so full of gloom for the men to whom we owe so much.
At the beginning of the present century the navigation of the Ohio was limited to canoes, bateaux, scows, rafts, arks, and the rudest models of sailing-boats. The ever downward course of the strong current must be stemmed in ascending the river. Against this powerful resistance upon tortuous streams, wind, as a motor, was found to be only partially successful, and for sure and rapid transit between settlements along the banks of great waterways a most discouraging failure. Down-river journeys were easily made, but the up-river or return trip was a very slow and unsatisfactory affair, excepting to those who travelled in light canoes.
The influx of population to the fertile Ohio valley, and the settling up of the rich bottoms of the Mississippi, demanded a more expeditious system of communication. The necessities of the people called loudly for this improvement, but at the same time their prejudices and ignorance prevented them from aiding or encouraging any such plans. The hour came at length for the delivery of the people of the great West, and with it the man. Fulton, aided by Watts, offered to solve the problem by unravelling rather than by cutting the "Gordian knot." It was whispered through the wilderness that a fire-ship, called the "Clermont," built by a crazy speculator named Fulton, had started from New York, and, steaming up the Hudson, had forced itself against the current one hundred and fifty miles to Albany, in thirty-six hours. This was in September, 1807.
The fool and the fool's fire-ship became the butt of all sensible people in Europe as well as in America. Victor Hugo remarks that, "In the year 1807, when the first steamboat of Fulton, commanded by Livingston, furnished with one of Watts's engines sent from England, and manoeuvred, besides her ordinary crew, by two Frenchmen only, Andr Michaux and another, made her first voyage from New York to Albany, it happened that she set sail on the 17th of August. The ministers took up this important fact, and in numberless chapels preachers were heard calling down a malediction on the machine, and declaring that this number seventeen was no other than the total of the ten horns and seven heads of the beasts in the Apocalypse. In America they invoked against the steamboat the beast from the book of Revelation; in Europe, the reptile of the book of Genesis. The SAVANS had rejected steamboats as impossible; the PRIESTS had anathematized them as impious; SCIENCE had condemned, and RELIGION consigned them to perdition."
"In the archipelago of the British Channel islands," this learned author goes on to say, "the first steamboat which made its appearance received the name of the 'Devil Boat.' In the eyes of these worthy fishermen, once Catholics, now Calvinists, but always bigots, it seemed to be a portion of the infernal regions which had been somehow set afloat. A local preacher selected for his discourse the question of, 'Whether man has the right to make fire and water work together when God had divided them.' (Gen. ch. i. v.4.) No; this beast composed of iron and fire did not resemble leviathan! Was it not an attempt to bring chaos again into the universe?"
So much for young America, and so much for old mother England! Now listen, men and women of to-day, to the wisdom of France—scientific France. "A mad notion, a gross delusion, an absurdity!" Such was the verdict of the Academy of Sciences when consulted by Napoleon on the subject of steamboats early in the present century.
It seems scarcely credible now that all this transpired in the days of our fathers, not so very long ago. Time is a great leveller. Education of the head as well as of the heart has liberalized the pulpit, and the man of theoretical science to-day would not dare to stake his reputation by denying any apparently well-established theory, while the inventors of telephones, perpetual-motion motors, &c., are gladly hailed as leaders in the march of progress so dear to every American heart. The pulpit is now on the side of honest science, and the savant teaches great truths, while the public mind is being educated to receive and utilize the heretofore concealed or undeveloped mysteries of a wise and generous Creator, who has taught his children that they must labor in order to possess.
The Clermont was the pioneer steamer of the Hudson River, and its trial trip was made in 1807. The first steamboat which descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was christened the New Orleans." It was designed and built by Mr. N.J. Roosevelt, and commenced its voyage from Pittsburgh in September, 1811. The bold proprietor of this enterprise, with his wife, Mrs. Lydia M. Roosevelt, accompanied the captain, engineer, pilot, six hands, two female servants, a man waiter, a cook, and a large Newfoundland dog, to the end of the voyage. The friends of this lady—the first woman who descended the great rivers of the West in a steamboat—used every argument they could offer to dissuade her from undertaking what was considered a dangerous experiment, an absolute folly. The good wife, however, clung to her husband, and accepted the risks, preferring to be drowned or blown up, as her friends predicted, rather than to desert her better- half in his hour of trial. A few weeks would decide his success or failure, and she would be at his side to condole or rejoice with him, as the case might be.
The citizens of Pittsburgh gathered upon the banks of the Monongahela to witness the inception of the enterprise which was to change the whole destiny of the West. One can imagine the criticisms flung at the departing steamer as she left her moorings and boldly faced her fate. As the curious craft was borne along the current of the river, the Indians attempted to approach her, bent upon hostile attempts, and once a party of them pursued the boat in hot chase, but their endurance was not equal to that of steam. These children of the forest gazed upon the snorting, fire-breathing monster with undisguised awe, and called it "Penelore"—the fire-canoe. They imagined it to have close relationship with the comet that they believed had produced the earthquakes of that year. The voyage of the "New Orleans" was a romantic reality in two ways. The wonderful experiment was proved a success, and its originator won his laurel wreath; while the bold captain of the fire-ship, falling in love with one of the chambermaids, won a wife.
The river's travel now became somewhat monotonous. I had reached a low country, heavily wooded in places, and was entering the great prairie region of Illinois. Having left my island camp by starlight on Tuesday morning, and having rowed steadily all day until dusk, I passed the wild-looking mouth of the Wabash River, and went into camp behind an island, logging with pleasure my day's run at sixty-seven miles. I was now only one hundred and forty-two miles from the mouth of the Ohio, and with the rising and rapidly increasing current there were only a few hours' travel between me and the Mississippi.
Wednesday morning, December 29th, I discovered that the river had risen two feet during the night, and the stump of the tree to which I had moored my boat was submerged. The river was wide and the banks covered with heavy forests, with clearings here and there, which afforded attractive vistas of prairies in the background. I passed a bold, stratified crag, covered with a little growth of cedars. These adventurous trees, growing out of the crevices of the rock, formed a picturesque covering for its rough surface. A cavern, about thirty feet in width, penetrated a short distance into the rock. This natural curiosity bore the name of "Cave-in-Rock," and was, in 1801, the rendezvous of a band of outlaws, who lived by plundering the boats going up and down the river, oftentimes adding the crime of murder to their other misdeeds. Just below the cliff nestled a little village also called "Cave-in-Rock."