Afloat On The Ohio - free ebook by Reuben Gold Thwaites

AFLOAT ON THE OHIO

Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Editor of "The Jesuit Relations," Author of "The Colonies, 1492-1750," "Historic Waterways," "The Story of Wisconsin," "Our Cycling Tour in England," etc., etc. ...

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REUBEN GOLD THWAITES

Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Editor of "The Jesuit Relations," Author of "The Colonies, 1492-1750," "Historic Waterways," "The Story of Wisconsin," "Our Cycling Tour in England," etc., etc. COPYRIGHT BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES A.D., 1897 Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin, who loves his native West and with rare insight and gift of phrase interprets her story, this Log of the "Pilgrim" is cordially inscribed....

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PREFACE.

There were four of us pilgrims—my Wife, our Boy of ten and a half years, the Doctor, and I. My object in going—the others went for the outing—was to gather "local color" for work in Western history. The Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West. I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various phases,—to see with my own eyes what the borderers saw; in imagination, to redress the pioneer stage, and repeople it. A motley company have here performed their parts:

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AFLOAT ON THE OHIO CHAPTER I.

In camp near Charleroi, Pa. , Friday, May 4.—Pilgrim, built for the glassy lakes and smooth-flowing rivers of Wisconsin, had suffered unwonted indignities in her rough journey of a thousand miles in a box-car. But beyond a leaky seam or two, which the Doctor had righted with clouts and putty, and some ugly scratches which were only paint-deep, she was in fair trim as she gracefully lay at the foot of the Brownsville shipyard this morning and received her lading. There were spectators in abundanc

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CHAPTER II.

Beaver River , Monday, May 7th.—We have to-day rowed and paddled under a cloudless sky, but in the teeth of frequent squalls, with heavy waves freely dashing their spray upon us. At such times a goodly current, aided by numerous wing-dams, appears of little avail; for, when we rested upon our oars, Pilgrim would be unmercifully driven up stream. Thus it has been an almost continual fight to make progress, and our five-and-twenty miles represent a hard day's work. We were overloaded, that was cer

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CHAPTER III.

Kneistley's Cluster, W. Va. , Tuesday, May 8th.—We were off at a quarter past seven, and among the earliest shoppers in Rochester, on the east bank of the Beaver, where supplies were laid in for the day. This busy, prosperous-looking place bears little resemblance to the squalid Indian village which Gist found here in November, 1750. It was then the seat of Barney Curran, an Indian trader—the same Curran whom Washington, three years later, employed in the mission to Venango. But the smaller sist

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CHAPTER IV.

Mingo Junction, Ohio , Wednesday, May 9th.—We had a cold night upon our island. Upon arising this morning, a heavy fog enveloped us, at first completely veiling the sun; soon it became faintly visible, a great ball of burnished copper reflected in the dimpled flood which poured between us and the Ohio shore. Weeds and willows were sopping wet, as was also our wash, and the breakfast fire was a comfortable companion. But by the time we were off, the cloud had lifted, and the sun gushed out with p

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CHAPTER V.

Above Moundsville, W. Va. , Thursday, May 10th.—Our friends saw us off at the gravelly beach just below the "works." There was a slight breeze ahead, but the atmosphere was agreeable, and Pilgrim bore a happy crew, now as brown as gypsies; the first painful effects of sunburn are over, and we are hardened in skin and muscle to any vicissitudes which are likely to be met upon our voyage. Rough weather, river mud, and all the other exigencies of a moving camp, are beginning to tell upon clothing;

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CHAPTER VI.

Near Fishing Creek , Friday, May 11th.—There had been rain during the night, with fierce wind gusts, but during breakfast the atmosphere quieted, and we had a genial, semi-cloudy morning. Off at 8 o'clock, Pilgrim's crew were soon exploring Moundsville. There are five thousand people in this old, faded, countrified town. They show you with pride the State Penitentiary of West Virginia, a solemn-looking pile of dark gray stone, with the feeble battlements and towers common to American prison arch

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CHAPTER VII.

Above Marietta , Saturday, May 12th.—Since the middle of yesterday afternoon we have been in Dixie,—that is, when we are on the West Virginia shore. The famous Mason and Dixon Line (lat. 39° 43' 26") touches the Ohio at the mouth of Proctor's Run (121½ miles). There was a heavy fog this morning, on land and river. But through shifting rifts made by the morning breeze, we had kaleidoscopic, cloud-framed pictures of the dark, jutting headlands which hem us in; of little white cabins clustered by t

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CHAPTER VIII.

Blennerhassett's Island , Sunday, May 13th.—The day broke without fog, at our camp on the rocky steep above Marietta. The eastern sky was veiled with summer clouds, all gayly flushed by the rising sun, and in the serene silence of the morning there hung the scent of dew, and earth, and trees. In the east, the distant edges of the West Virginia hills were aglow with the mounting light before it had yet peeped over into the river trough, where a silvery haze lent peculiar charm to flood and bank.

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CHAPTER IX.

Long Bottom , Monday, May 14th.—Pushing up stream for two miles this morning, the commissary department replenished the day's stores at Parkersburg. Forepaugh's circus was in town, and crowds of rustics were coming in by wagon road, railway trains, and steamers and ferries on both rivers. The streets of the quaint, dingy Southern town were teeming with humanity, mainly negroes and poor whites. Among the latter, flat, pallid faces, either flabby or too lean, were under the swarms of blue, white,

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CHAPTER X.

Letart's Island , Tuesday, May 15th.—After we had gone to bed last night,—we in the tent, the Doctor and Pilgrim under the fly, which serves as a porch roof,—the heavenly floodgates lifted; the rain, coming in sheets, beat a fierce tattoo on the tightly-stretched canvas, and visions of a sudden rise in the fickle river were uppermost in our dreams. Everything about us was sopping at daybreak; but the sun rose clear and warm from a bed of eastern clouds, and the midnight gale had softened to a ge

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CHAPTER XI.

Near Glenwood, W. Va. , Thursday, May 17th.—By eight o'clock this morning we were in Point Pleasant, W. Va., at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River (263 miles). Céloron was here, the eighteenth of August, 1749, and on the east bank of the river, the site of the present village, buried at the foot of an elm one of his leaden plates asserting the claim of France to the Ohio basin. Ninety-seven years later, a boy unearthed this interesting but futile proclamation, and it rests to-day in the museum

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CHAPTER XII.

Ironton, O. , Saturday, May 19th.—When we turned in, last night, it was refreshingly cool. Heavy clouds were scurrying across the face of the moon. By midnight, a copious rain was falling, wind-gusts were flapping our roof, and a sudden drop in temperature rendered sadly inadequate all the clothing we could muster into service. We slept late, in consequence, and, after rigging a wind-break with the rubber blankets, during breakfast huddled around the stove which had been brought in to replace Pi

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CHAPTER XIII.

Rome, O. , Monday, May 21st.—At intervals through the night, rain fell, and the temperature was but 46° at sunrise. However, by the time we were afloat, the sun was fitfully gleaming through masses of gray cloud, for a time giving promise of a warmer day. Dark shadows rested on the romantic ravines, and on the deep hollows of the hills; but elsewhere over this gentle landscape of wooded amphitheatres, broad green meadows, rocky escarpments, and many-colored fields, light and shade gayly chased e

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CHAPTER XIV.

Point Pleasant, O. , Wednesday, May 23rd.—The river rose three feet during the night. Steamers go now at full speed, no longer fearing the bars; and the swash upon shore was so violent that I was more than once awakened, each time to find the water line creeping nearer and nearer to the tent door. As we sweep onward to-day, upon an accelerated current, the fringing willows, whose roots before the rise were many feet up the slopes of sand and gravel, are gracefully dipping their boughs in the rus

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CHAPTER XV.

Near Petersburg, Ky. , Friday, May 25th.—This morning, an hour before noon, as we looked upon the river from the top of the Cincinnati wharf, a wild scene presented itself. The shore up and down, as far as could be seen, was densely lined with packets and freighters; beyond them, the great stream, here half a mile wide, was rushing past like a mill-race, and black with all manner of drift, some of it formed into great rafts from each of which sprawled a network of huge branches. Had we been stra

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CHAPTER XVI.

Near Madison, Ind. , Sunday, May 27th.—At supper last night, a houseboat fisherman, going by in his skiff, parted the willows fringing our beach, and offered to sell us some of his wares. We bought from him a two-pound catfish, which he tethered to a bush overhanging the water, until we were ready to dress it; giving us warning, that meanwhile it would be best to have an eye on our purchase, or the turtles would devour it. Hungry thieves, these turtles, the fisherman said; you could leave nothin

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CHAPTER XVII.

Sand Island , Tuesday, May 29th.—Our Louisville host is the best living authority on the annals of his town. It was a delight and an inspiration to go with him, to-day, the rounds of the historic places. Much that was to me heretofore foggy in Louisville story was made clear, upon becoming familiar with the setting. The contention is made that La Salle was here at the Falls of the Ohio, during the closing months of 1669; but it was over a century later, under British domination, before a settlem

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CHAPTER XVIII.

Near Troy, Ind. , Friday, June 1st.—Below Alton, the hills are not so high as above. We have, however, the same thoroughly rustic landscape, the same small farms on the bottoms and wretched cabins on the slopes, the same frontier-like clearings thick with stumps, the same shabby little villages, and frequent ox-bow windings of the generous stream, with lovely vistas unfolding and dissolving with panoramic regularity. It is not a region where houseboaters flourish—there is but one every ten miles

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CHAPTER XIX.

Green River Towhead , Monday, June 4th.—We were shopping in Owensboro, this morning, soon after seven o'clock. The business quarter was just stirring into life; and the negroes who were lounging about on every hand were still drowsy, as if they had passed the night there, and were reluctant to be up and doing. There is a pretty court-house in a green park, the streets are well paved, and the shops clean and bright, with their wares mostly under the awnings on the sidewalk, for people appear to l

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CHAPTER XX.

Half-Moon Bar , Thursday, June 7th.—A head-breeze prevailed all day, strong enough to fan us into a sense of coolness, but leaving the water as unruffled as a mill-pond; thus did we seem, in the vivid reflections of the early morning, to be sailing between double lines of shore, lovely in their groupings of luxuriant trees and tangled heaps of vine-clad drift. It was a hazy, mirage-producing atmosphere, the river appearing to melt away in space, and the ever-charming island heads looming unsuppo

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CHAPTER XXI.

Opposite Metropolis, Ill. , Saturday, June 9th.—As we were dressing this morning, at half-past five, the echoes were again awakened by the vociferous negro on the Kentucky shore, who was going out to his work again, as noisy as ever. One of our own black men walked down the bank, ostensibly to light his pipe at the breakfast fire, but really to satisfy a pardonable curiosity regarding us. The singing brother on the mainland appeared to amuse him, and he paused to listen, saying, "Dat yere nigger

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APPENDIX A.

Englishmen had no sooner set foot upon our continent, than they began to penetrate inland with the hope of soon reaching the Western Ocean, which the coast savages, almost as ignorant of the geography of the interior as the Europeans themselves, declared lay just beyond the mountains. In 1586, we find Ralph Lane, governor of Raleigh's ill-fated colony, leading his men up the Roanoke River for a hundred miles, only to turn back disheartened at the rapids and falls, which necessitated frequent por

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APPENDIX B.

Gist, Christopher. Gist's Journals; with historical, geographical, and ethnological notes, and biographies of his contemporaries, by William M. Darlington. Pittsburg, 1893. Gist's trip down the valley, from October, 1750, to May, 1751, was on horseback, as far as the site of Frankfort, Ky. On his second trip into Kentucky, from November, 1751, to March 11, 1752, he touched the river at few points. Gordon, Harry. Extracts from the Journal of Captain Harry Gordon, chief engineer in the Western dep

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