There is little life along shore, in these lower waters. There are two lines of ever-widening, willowed beach of rock and sand or mud; above them, perpendicular walls of clay, which edge either rocky terraces backed by grand sweeps of convoluted hills,—sometimes wooded to the top, and sometimes eroded into palisades,—or wide-stretching bottoms given over to small farms or maybe dense tangles of forest.

In the midst of this world of shade, nestle the whitewashed cabins of the small tillers; but though they swarm with children, it is not often that the inhabitants appear by the riverside. We catch a glimpse of them when landing on our petty errands, we now and then see a houseboater at his nets, and in the villages a few lackadaisical folk are lounging by the wharf; but as a rule, in these closing days of our pilgrimage, we glide through what is almost a solitude. The imagination has not to go far afield, to rehabilitate the river as it appeared to the earliest voyagers.

Late in the afternoon, as usual wishing water and milk, we put ashore in Indiana, where a rustic landing indicated a settlement of some sort, although our view was confined to a pretty, wooded bank, and an unpainted warehouse at the top of the path. It was a fertile bottom, a half-mile wide, and stretching a mile or two along the river. Three neat houses, one of them of logs, constituted the village, and all about were grain-fields rippled into waves by the northwest breeze.

The first house, a quarter of a mile inland, I reached by a country roadway; it proved to be the postoffice of Point Sandy. Chickens clucked around me, a spaniel came fawning for attention, a tethered cow mooed plaintively, but no human being was visible. At last I discovered a penciled notice pinned to the horse-block, to the effect that the postmaster had gone into Alton (five miles distant) for the day; and should William Askins call in his absence, the said Askins was to remember that he promised to call yesterday, but never came; and now would he be kind enough to come without fail to-morrow before sundown, or the postmaster would be obliged to write that letter they had spoken about. It was quite evident that Askins had not called; for he surely would not have left that mysterious notice sticking there, for all Point Sandy to read and gossip over. It is to be hoped that there will be no bloodshed over this affair; across the way, in Kentucky, there would be no doubt as to the outcome.

I looked at Boss, and wondered whether in Indiana it were felony to milk another man's cow in his absence, with no ginger jar at hand, into which to drop a compensatory dime. Then I saw that she was dry, and concluded that to attempt it might be thought a violation of ethics. The postmaster's well, too, proved to be a cistern,—pardon the Hibernicism,—and so I went farther.

The other frame house also turned out to be deserted, but evidently only for the day, for the lilac bushes in the front yard were hung with men's flannel shirts drying in the sun. A buck goat came bleating toward me, with many a flourish of his horns, from which it was plain to be seen why the family wash was not spread upon the grass. From here I followed a narrow path through a wheat-field, the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my right to knock at the door; but, flourishing my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to take refuge in the hen-coop. To my summons at the portal, there came no response, save the mewing of the cat within. It was clear that the people of Point Sandy were not at home, to-day.

I would have retreated to the boat, but, chancing to glance up at the overhanging hills which edge in the bottom, saw two men sitting on a boulder in front of a rude log hut on the brink of a cliff, curiously watching my movements on the plain. Thankful, now, that the postmaster's cow had gone dry, and that these observant mountaineers had not had an opportunity to misinterpret my conduct, I at once hurried toward the hill, hopeful that at the top some bovine might be housed, whose product could lawfully be acquired. But after a long and laborious climb, over shifting stones and ragged ledges, I was met with the discouraging information that the only cow in these parts was Hawkins' cow, and Hawkins was the postmaster,—"down yon, whar yew were a-read'n' th' notices on th' hoss-block." Neither had they any water, up there on the cliff-top—"don' use very much, stranger; 'n' what we do, we done git at Smithfield's, in th' log-house down yon, 'n' I reck'n their cistern's done gone dry, anyhow!"

"But what is the matter down there?" I asked of the old man,—they were father and son, this lounging pair who thus loftily sat in judgment on the little world at their feet; "why are all the folks away from home?"

He looked surprised, and took a fresh chew while cogitating on my alarming ignorance of Point Sandy affairs: "Why, ain' ye heared? I thote ev'ry feller on th' river knew thet yere—why, ol' Hawkins, his wife's brother's buried in Alton to-day, 'n' th' neighbors done gwine t' th' fun'ral. Whar your shanty-boat been beached, thet ye ain' heared thet yere?"

As the sun neared the horizon, we tried other places below, with no better success; and two miles above Alton, Ind. (673 miles), struck camp at sundown, without milk for our coffee—for water, being obliged to settle and boil the roily element which bears us onward through the lengthening days. Were there no hardships, this would be no pilgrimage worthy of the name. We are out, philosophically to take the world as it is; he who is not content to do so, had best not stir from home.

But our camping-place, to-night, is ideal. We are upon a narrow, grassy ledge; below us, the sloping beach astrewn with jagged rocks; behind us rises steeply a grand hillside forest, in which lie, mantled with moss and lichens, and deep buried in undergrowth, boulders as large as a "cracker's" hut; romantic glens abound, and a little run comes noisily down a ravine hard by,—it is a witching back-door, filled with surprises at every turn. Beeches, elms, maples, lindens, pawpaws, tulip trees, here attain a monster growth,—with grape-vines, their fruit now set, hanging in great festoons from the branches; and all about, are the flowers which thrive best in shady solitudes—wild licorice, a small green-brier, and, although not yet in bloom, the sessile trillium. We are thoroughly isolated; a half-mile above us, faintly gleams a government beacon, and we noticed on landing that three-quarters of a mile below is a small cabin flanking the hill. Naught disturbs our quiet, save the calls of the birds at roosting-time, and now and then the hoarse bellow of a passing packet, with its legacy of boisterous wake.



CHAPTER XVIII.

Village life—A traveling photographer—On a country road—Studies in color—Again among colliers—In sweet content—A ferry romance.

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 or so; as for steamboats, we see on an average one a day, while two or three usually pass us in the night.

A dry, unpainted little place is Alton, Ind., with three down-at-the-heel shops, a tavern, a saloon, and a few dwellings; there was no bread obtainable here, for love or money, and we were fain to be content with a bag of crackers from the postoffice grocery. The promised photographer, who appears to be a rapid traveler, was said to have gone on to Concordia, eight miles below.

Deep Water Landing, Ind. (676 miles), is a short row of new, whitewashed houses, with a great board sign displaying the name of the hamlet, doubtless to attract the attention of pilots. A rude little show-case, nailed up beside the door of the house at the head of the landing-path, contains tempting samples of crockery and tinware. Apparently some enterprising soul is trying to grow a town here, on this narrow ledge of clay, with his landing and his shop as a nucleus. But it is an unlikely spot, and I doubt if his "boom" will develop to the corner-lot stage.

Rono, Ind., a mile below, with its limewashed buildings set in a bower of trees, at the base of a bald bluff, is a rather pretty study in gray and green and white. The most notable feature is a little school-house-like Masonic hall set high on a stone foundation, with a steep outer stairway—which gives one an impression that Rono is a victim of floods, and that the brethren occasionally come in boats to lodge-meetings.

Concordia, Ky. (681 miles), rests on the summit of a steep clay bank, from which men were loading a barge with bark. Great piles of blocks, for staves, ornamented the crest of the rise—a considerable industry for these parts, we were told. But the photographer, whom we were chasing, had "taken" every Concordian who wished his services, and moved on to Derby, another Kentucky village, which at last we found, six miles father down the river.

The principal occupation of the people of Derby is getting out timber from the hillside forests, six to ten miles in the interior. Oak, elm, and sycamore railway-ties are the specialty, these being worth twenty cents each when landed upon the wharf. A few months ago, Derby was completely destroyed by fire, but, although the timber business is on the wane here, much of the place was rebuilt on the old foundations; hence the fresh, unpainted buildings, with battlement fronts, which, with the prevalence of open-door saloons and a woodsy swagger on the part of the inhabitants, give the place a breezy, frontier aspect now seldom to be met with this side of the Rockies.

Here at last was the traveling photographer. His tent, flapping loudly in the wind, occupied an empty lot in the heart of the village—a saloon on either side, and a lumberman's boarding house across the way, where the "artist" was at dinner, pending which I waited for him at the door of his canvas gallery. He evidently seeks to magnify his calling, does this raw youth of the camera, by affecting what he conceives to be the traditional garb of the artistic Bohemian, but which resembles more closely the costume of the minstrel stage—a battered silk hat, surmounting flowing locks glistening with hair-oil; a loose velveteen jacket, over a gay figured vest; and a great brass watch-chain, from which dangle silver coins. As this grotesque dandy, evidently not long from his native village, came mincing across the road in patent-leather slippers, smoking a cigarette, with one thumb in an arm-hole of his vest, and the other hand twirling an incipient mustache, he was plainly conscious of creating something of a swell in Derby.

It was a crazy little dark-room to which I was shown—a portable affair, much like a coffin-case, which I expected momentarily to upset as I stood within, and be smothered in a cloud of ill-smelling chemicals. However, with care I finally emerged without accident, and sufficiently compensated the artist, who seemed not over-favorable to amateur competition, although he chatted freely enough about his business. It generally took him ten days, he said, to "finish" a town of five or six hundred inhabitants, like Derby. He traveled on steamers with his tenting outfit, but next season hoped to have money enough to "do the thing in style," in a houseboat of his own, an establishment which would cost say four hundred dollars; then, in the winter, he could beach himself at some fair-sized town, and perhaps make his board by running a local gallery, taking to the water again on the earliest spring "fresh." "I could live like a fight'n' cock then, cap'n, yew jist bet yer bottom dollar!"

The temperature mounted with the progress of the day; and, the wind dying down, the atmosphere was oppressive. By the time Stephensport, Ky. (695 miles), was reached, in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was beating fiercely upon the glassy flood, and our awning came again into play, although it could not save us from the annoyance of the reflection. The barren clay bank at the mouth of Sinking Creek, upon which lies Stephensport, seemed fairly ablaze with heat, as I went up into the straggling hamlet to seek for supplies. There were no eggs to be had here; but, at last, milk was found in the farther end of the village, at a modest little cottage quite embowered in roses, with two century plants in tubs in the back-yard, and a trim fruit and vegetable garden to the rear of that, enclosed in palings. I remained a few minutes to chat with the little housewife, who knows her roses well, and is versed in the gentle art of horticulture. But her horizon is painfully narrow—first and dearest, the plants about her, which is not so bad; in a larger way, Stephensport and its petty affairs; but beyond that very little, and that little vague.

It is ever thus, in such far-away, side-tracked villages as this—the world lies in the basin of the hills which these people see from their doors; if they have something to love and do for, as this good woman has in her bushes, seeds, and bulbs, then may they dwell happily in rustic obscurity; but where, as is more common, the small-beer of neighborhood gossip is their meat and drink, there are no folk on the footstool more wretched than the denizens of a dead little hamlet like Stephensport.

We are housed this night on the Kentucky side, a mile-and-a-half above Cloverport, whose half-dozen lights are glimmering in the stream. In the gloaming, while dinner was being prepared, a ragged but sturdy wanderer came into camp. He was, he said, a mountaineer looking for work on the bottom farms; heretofore he had, when he wanted it, always found it; but this season no one appeared to have any money to expend for labor, and it seemed likely he would be obliged to return home without receiving an offer. We made the stranger no offer of a seat at our humble board, having no desire that he pass the night in our neighborhood; for darkness was coming on apace, and, if he long tarried, the woodland road would be as black as a pocket before he could reach Cloverport, his alleged destination. So starting him off with a biscuit or two, he was soon on his way toward the village, whistling a lively tune.

* * * * *

Crooked Creek, Ind., Saturday, 2d.—We had but fairly got to bed last night, after our late dinner, when the heavens suddenly darkened, fierce gusts of wind shook the tent violently, and then rain fell in blinding sheets. For a time it was lively work for the Doctor and me, tightening guy-ropes and ditching in the soft sand, for we were in an exposed position, catching the full force of the storm. At last, everything secured, we in serenity slept it out, awakening to find a beautiful morning, the grape-perfumed air as clear as crystal, the outlines of woods and hills and streams standing out with sharp definition, and over all a hushed charm most soothing to the spirit.

Cloverport (705 miles) is a typical Kentucky town, of somewhat less than four thousand inhabitants. The wharf-boat, which runs up and down an iron tramway, according to the height of the flood, was swarming with negroes, watching with keen delight the departure of the "E. D. Rogan," as she noisily backed out into the river and scattered the crowd with great showers of spray from her gigantic stern-wheel. It was a busy scene on board—negro roustabouts shipping the gang-plank, and singing in a low pitch an old-time plantation melody; stokers, stripped to the waist, shoveling coal into the gaping furnaces; chambermaids hanging the ship's linen out to dry; passengers crowded by the shore rail, on the main deck; the bustling mate shouting orders, apparently for the benefit of landsmen, for no one on board appeared to heed him; and high up, in front of the pilot-house, the spruce captain, in gold-laced cap, and glass in hand, as immovable as the Sphinx.

At the head of the slope were a picturesque medley of colored folk, of true Southern plantation types, so seldom seen north of Dixie. Two wee picaninnies, drawn in an express cart by a half-dozen other sable elfs, attracted our attention, as W—— and I went up-town for our day's marketing. We stopped to take a snap-shot at them, to the intense satisfaction of the little kink-haired mother of the twins, who, barring her blue calico gown, looked as if she might have just stepped out of a Zulu group.

Cloverport has brick-works, gas wells, a flouring-mill, and other industries. The streets are unkempt, as in most Kentucky towns, and mules attached to crazy little carts are the chief beasts of burden; but the shops are well-stocked; there were many farmers in town, on horse and mule back, doing their Saturday shopping; and an air of business confidence prevails.

In this district, coal-mines again appear, with their riverside tipples, and their offal defiling the banks. In general, these reaches have many of the aspects of the Monongahela, although the hills are lower, and mining is on a smaller scale. Cannelton, Ind. (717 miles), is the headquarters of the American Cannel Coal Co.; there are, also, woolen and cotton mills, sewer-pipe factories, and potteries. W—— and I went up into the town, on an errand for supplies,—we distribute our small patronage, for the sake of frequently going ashore,—and were interested in noting the cheery tone of the business men, who reported that the financial depression, noticeable elsewhere in the Ohio Valley, has practically been unfelt here. Hawesville, Ky., just across the river, has a similarly prosperous look, but we did not row across to inspect it at close range. Tell City, Ind., three miles below, is another flourishing factory town, whose wharf-boat was the scene of much bustle. Four miles still lower down lies the sleepy little Indiana village of Troy, which appears to have profited nothing from having lively neighbors.

From the neighborhood of Derby, the environing hills had, as we proceeded, been lessening in height, although still ruggedly beautiful. A mile or two below Troy, both ranges suddenly roll back into the interior, leaving broad bottoms on either hand, occasionally edged with high clay banks, through which the river has cut its devious way. At other times, these bottoms slope gently to the beach and everywhere are cultivated with such care that often no room is left for the willow fringe, which heretofore has been an ever-present feature of the landscape. Hereafter, to the mouth, we shall for the most part row between parallel walls of clay, with here and there a bankside ledge of rock and shale, and now and then a cragged spur running out to meet the river. We have now entered the great corn and tobacco belt of the Lower Ohio, the region of annual overflow, where the towns seek the highlands, and the bottom farmers erect their few crude buildings on posts, prepared in case of exceptional flood to take to boats.

The prevalent eagerness on the part of farmers to obtain the utmost from their land made it difficult, this evening, to find a proper camping-place. We finally found a narrow triangle of clay terrace, in Indiana, at the mouth of Crooked Creek (727 miles), where not long since had tarried a houseboater engaged in making rustic furniture. It is a pretty little bit, in a group of big willows and sycamores, and would be comfortable but for the sand-flies, which for the first time give us annoyance. The creek itself, some four rods wide, and overhung with stately trees, winds gracefully through the rich bottom; we have found it a charming water to explore, being able to proceed for nearly a mile through lovely little wide-spreads abounding in lilies and sweet with the odor of grape-blossoms.

Across the river, at Emmerick's Landing,—a little cluster of unpainted cabins,—lies the white barge of a photographer, just such a home as the Derby artist covets. The Ohio is here about half-a-mile wide, but high-pitched voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly heard across the smooth sounding-board; and in the quiet evening air comes to us the "chuck-chuck" of oars nearly a mile away. Following a torrid afternoon, with exasperating headwinds, this cool, fresh atmosphere, in the long twilight, is inspiring. Overhead is the slender streak of the moon's first quarter, its reflection shimmering in the broad and placid stream rushing noiselessly by us to the sea. In blissful content we sit upon the bank, and drink in the glories of the night. The days of our pilgrimage are nearing their end, but our enthusiasm for this al fresco life is in no measure abating. That we might ever thus dream and drift upon the river of life, far from the labored strivings of the world, is our secret wish, to-night.

We had long been sitting thus, having silent communion with our thoughts, when the Boy, his little head resting on W——'s shoulder, broke the spell by murmuring from the fullness of his heart, "Mother, why cannot we keep on doing this, always?"

* * * * *

Yellowbank Island, Sunday, June 3d.—Pilgrim still attracts more attention than her passengers. When we stop at the village wharfs, or grate our keel upon some rustic landing, it is not long before the Doctor, who now always remains with the boat, no matter who goes ashore, is surrounded by an admiring group, who rap Pilgrim on the ribs, try to lift her by the bow, and study her graceful lines with the air of connoisseurs. Barefooted men fishing on the shores, in broad straw hats, and blue jeans, invariably "pass the time o' day" with us as we glide by, crying out as a parting salute, "Ye've a honey skiff, thar!" or, "Right smart skiff, thet yere!"

We have many long, dreary reaches to-day. Clay banks twelve to twenty feet in height, and growing taller as the water recedes, rise sheer on either side. Fringing the top of each is often a row of locusts, whose roots in a feeble way hold the soil; but the river cuts in at the base, wherever the changing current impinges on the shore, and at low water great slices, with a gurgling splash, fall into the stream, which now is of the color of dull gold, from the clay held in solution. Often, ruins of buildings may be seen upon the brink, that have collapsed from this undercut of the fickle flood; and many others, still inhabited, are in dangerous proximity to the edge, only biding their time.

This morning, we passed the Indiana hamlets of Lewisport (731 miles) and Grand View (736 miles), and by noon were at Rockport (741 miles), a smart little city of three thousand souls, romantically perched upon a great rock, which on the right bank rises abruptly from the wide expanse of bottom. From the river, there is little to be seen of Rockport save two wharves,—one above, the other below, the bold cliff which springs sheer for a hundred feet above the stream,—two angling roads leading up into the town, a house or two on the edge of the hill and a huge water-tower crowning all.

A few miles below, we ran through a narrow channel, a few rods wide, separating an elongated island from the Indiana shore. It much resembles the small tributary streams, with a lush undergrowth of weeds down to the water's edge, and arched with monster sycamores, elms, maples and persimmons. Frequently had we seen skiffs upon the shore, arranged with stern paddle-wheels, turned by levers operated by men standing or sitting in the boat. But we had seen none in operation until, shooting down this side channel, we met such a craft coming up, manned by two fellows, who seemed to be having a treadmill task of it; they assured us, however, that when a man was used to manipulating the levers he found it easier than rowing, especially in ascending stream.

Yellowbank Island, our camp to-night, lies nearest the Indiana shore, with Owensboro, Ky. (749 miles), just across the way. We have had no more beautiful home on our long pilgrimage than this sandy islet, heavily grown to stately willows. While the others were preparing dinner, I pulled across the rapid current to an Indiana ferry-landing, where there is a row of mean frame cabins, like the negro quarters of a Southern farm, all elevated on posts some four feet above the level. A half-dozen families live there, all of them small tenant farmers, save the ferryman—a strapping, good-natured fellow, who appears to be the nabob of the community.

Several hollow sycamore stumps house sows and their litters; but the only cow in the neighborhood is owned by a young man who, when I came up, was watering some refractory mules at a pump-trough. He paused long enough to summon Boss and milk a half-gallon into my pail, accepting my dime with a degree of thankfulness which was quite unnecessary, considering that it was quid pro quo. Tobacco is a more important crop than corn hereabout, he said; farmers are rather impatiently waiting for rain, to set out the young plants. His only outbuilding is a monster corn-crib, set high on posts—the airy basement, no better than an open shed, serving for a stable; during the few weeks of severe winter weather, horses and cow are removed to the main floor, and canvas nailed around the sides to keep out the wind. Even this slight protection is not vouchsafed stock by all planters; the majority of them appear to provide only rain shelters, and even these can be of slight avail in a driving storm.

Later, in the failing light, W—— and I pulled together over to the "cracker" settlement, seeking drinking-water. A stout young man was seated on the end of the ferry barge, talking earnestly with the ferryman's daughter, a not unattractive girl, but pale and thin, as these women are apt to be. Evidently they are lovers, and not ashamed of it, for they gave us a friendly smile as we knotted our painter to the barge-rail, and expressed great interest in Pilgrim, she being of a pattern new to them.

We are in a noisy corner of the world. Over on the Indiana bottom, a squeaky fiddle is grinding out dance-tunes, hymns and ballads with charming indifference. We thought we detected in a high-pitched "Annie Laurie" the voice of the ferryman's daughter. There seems, too, to be a deal of rowing on the river, evidently Owensboro folk getting back to town from a day in the country, and country folk hieing home after a day in the city. The ferryman is in much demand, judging from the frequent ringing of his bell,—one on either bank, set between two tall posts, with a rope dangling from the arm. At early dusk, the cracked bell of the Owensboro Bethel resounded harshly in our ears, as it advertised an evening service for the floating population; and now the wheezy strains of a melodeon tell us that, although we stayed away, doubtless others have been attracted thither. The sepulchral roars of passing steamers echo along the wooded shore, the night wind rustles the tree-tops, Owensboro dogs are much awake, and the electric lamps of the city throw upon our canvas screen the fantastic shadows of leaves and dancing boughs.



CHAPTER XIX.

Fishermen's tales—Skiff nomenclature—Green River—Evansville—Henderson—Audubon and Rafinesque—Floating trade—The Wabash.

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 live much out of doors here—and well they may, with the temperature 73 deg. at this early hour, and every promise of a scorching day.

I wonder if a fisherman could, if he tried, be exact in his statements. One of them, below Owensboro, who kept us company for a mile or two down stream, declared that at this stage of the water he made forty and fifty dollars a week, "'n' I reck'n I ote to be contint." A few miles farther on, another complained that when the river was falling, the water was so muddy the fish would not bite; and even in the best of seasons, a fisherman had "a hard pull uv it; hit ain't no business fer a decent man!" The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing their livelihood must be playing a losing game.

There are many beautiful islands on these lower reaches of the river. We followed the narrow channel between Little Hurricane and the Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or three miles, with both banks a dense tangle of drift-wood, weeds and vines. Between Three-Mile Island and Indiana, is another interesting cut-short, where the shores are undisturbed by the work of the main stream, and trees and undergrowth come down to the water's edge; the air is quivering with the songs of birds, and resonant with sweet smells; while over stumps, and dead and fallen trees, grape-vines luxuriantly festoon and cluster. Near the pretty group of French Islands, two government dredges, with their boarding barges, were moored to the Kentucky shore—waiting for coal, we were told, before resuming operations in the planting of a dike. I took a snap-shot at the fleet, and heard one man shout to another, "Bill, did yer notice they've a photograph gallery aboard?" They appear to be a jolly lot, these dredgers, and inclined to take life easily, in accordance with the traditions of government employ.

We frequently see skiffs hauled upon the beach, or moored between two protecting posts, to prevent their being swamped by steamer wakes. The names they bear interest us, as betokening, perhaps, the proclivities of their owners. "Little Joe," "Little Jim," "Little Maggie," and like diminutives, are common here, as upon the towing-tugs and steam ferries of broader waters—and now and then we have, by contrast, "Xerxes," "Achilles," "Hercules." Sometimes the skiff is named after its owner's wife or sweetheart, as "Maggie G.," "Polly H.," or from the rustic goddesses, "Pomona," "Flora," "Ceres;" on the Kentucky shore, we have noted "Stonewall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." Literature we found represented to-day, by "Octave Thanet"—the only case on record, for the Ohio-River "cracker" is not greatly given to books. Slang claims for its own, many of these knockabout craft—"U. Bet," "Git Thair," "Go it, Eli," "Whoa, Emma!" and nondescripts, like "Two Doves," "Poker Chip," and "Game Chicken," are not infrequent.

In these stately solitudes, towns are far between. Enterprise, Ind. (755 miles), is an unpainted village with a dismal view—back of and around it, wide bottom lands, with hills in the far distance; up and down the river, precipitous banks of clay, with willow fringes on that portion of the shore which is not being cut by the impinging current. Scuffletown, Ky. (767 miles), is uninviting. Newburgh, on the edge of a bluff, across the river in Indiana, is a ragged little place that has seen better days; but the backward view of Newburgh, from below Three-Mile Island, made a pretty picture, the whites and reds of the town standing out in sharp relief against the dark background of the hill.

Green River (775 miles), a gentle, rustic stream, enters through the wide bottoms of Kentucky. We had difficulty in finding it in the wilderness of willows—might not have succeeded, indeed, had not the red smokestack of a small steamer suddenly appeared above the bushes. Soon, the puffing craft debouched upon the Ohio, and, quickly overtaking us, passed down toward Evansville.

Green River Towhead, two miles below, claimed us for the night. There is a shanty, midway on the island, and at the lower end the landing of a railway-transfer. We have our camp at the upper end, in a bed of spotless white sand, thick grown to dwarf willows. Entangled drift-wood lies about in monster heaps, lodged in depressions of the land, or against stout tree-trunks; a low bar of gravel connects our home with Green River Island, lying close against the Indiana bank; sand-flies freely joined us at dinner, and I hear, as I write, the drone of a solitary mosquito,—the first in many days; while upon the bar, at sunset, a score of turkey-buzzards held silent council, some of them occasionally rising and wheeling about in mid-air, then slowly lighting and stretching their necks, and flapping their wings most solemnly, before rejoining the conference.

* * * * *

Cypress Bend, Tuesday, 5th.—The temperature had materially fallen during the night, and the morning opened gray and hazy. Evansville, Ind. (783 miles), made a charming Turneresque study, as her steeples and factory chimneys developed through the mist. It is a fine, well-built town, of some fifty thousand inhabitants, with a beautiful little postoffice in the Gothic style—a refutation, this, of the well-worn assertion that there are no creditable government buildings in our small American cities. A railway bridge here crosses the Ohio, numerous sawmills line the bank; altogether, there is business bustle, the like of which we have not seen since leaving Louisville.

Henderson (795 miles) is a substantial Kentucky town of nine thousand souls, with large tobacco interests, we are told, ranking next to Louisville in this regard. Through the morning, the mist had been thickening. While we were passing beneath the railway bridge at Henderson, thunder sounded, and the western sky suddenly blackened. Pulling rapidly in to the town shore, shelter was found beneath the overhanging deck of a deserted wharf-boat. We had just completed preparations with the rubber blankets and ponchos, when the deluge came. But the sheltering deck was not water-tight; soon the rain came pouring in upon us through the uncaulked cracks, and we were nearly as badly off in our close-smelling quarters as in the open. However, we were a merry party under there, with the Doctor giving us a touch of "Br'er Rabbit," and the boy relating a fantastic dream he had had on the Towhead last night; while I told them the story of Audubon, whose name will ever be associated with Henderson.

The great naturalist was in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Henderson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft,—and certainly he was a ne'er-do-well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps down the Ohio valley,—he had a favorite saying, that the only way for a botanist to travel, was to walk,—stopped over at Henderson to visit this crazy fellow of whom he had heard. Rafinesque had a hope that Audubon might buy some of his colored drawings; but when he saw the wonderful pictures which Audubon had made, he acknowledged that his own were inferior—a sore confession for Rafinesque, who was an egotist of the first water. Audubon had but humble quarters, for it was hard work in those days for him to keep the wolf from the door; nevertheless, he entertained the distinguished traveler, whom he was himself destined to far eclipse. One night, a bat flew into Rafinesque's bedroom, and in driving it out he used his host's fine Cremona as a club, thus making kindling-wood of it. Two years later, still steeped in poverty, Audubon left Henderson. It was 1826 before he became known to the world of science, when little of his life was left in which to enjoy the fame at last awarded him.

We had lunch on Henderson Island, three miles down, and for warmth walked briskly about on the strand, among the willow clumps. It rained again, after we had taken our seats in the boat, and the head-wind which sprang up was not unwelcome, for it necessitated a right lively pull to make headway. W—— and the Boy, in the stern-sheets, were not uncomfortable when swathed to the chin in the blankets which ordinarily serve us as cushions.

Ten miles below Henderson, was a little fleet of houseboats, lying in a thicket of willows along the Indiana beach. We stopped at one of them, and bought a small catfish for dinner. The fishermen seemed a happy company, in this isolated spot. The women were engaged in household work, but the men were spending the afternoon collected in the cabin of one of their number, who had recently arrived from Green River. While waiting for the fish to be caught in a live-box, I visited with the little band. It was a comfortable room, furnished rather better than the average shore cabin, and the Green River man's family of half-a-dozen were well-kept, pleasant-faced, and polite. Altogether it was a much more respectable houseboat company than any we have yet seen on the river. But the fish-stories which that Green River man tells, with an honest-like, open-eyed sobriety, would do credit to Munchausen.

The rain, at first spasmodic, became at last persistent. Two miles farther down, at Cypress Bend (806 miles), we ran into an Indiana hill, where on a steep slope of yellow shale, all strewn with rocks, our tent was hurriedly pitched. There was no driving of pegs into this stony base, so we weighted down the canvas with round-heads, and fastened our guys to bushes and boulders as best we might. Huddled around the little stove, under the fly, the crew dined sumptuously en course, from canned soup down to strawberries for dessert,—for Evansville is a good market. It is not always, we pilgrims fare thus high—the resources of Rome, Thebes, Bethlehem, Herculaneum, and the other classic towns with which the Ohio's banks are dotted, being none of the best. Some days, we are fortunate to have aught in our larder.

* * * * *

Brown's Island, Wednesday, 6th.—This morning's camp-fire was welcome for its warmth. The sky has been clear, but a sharp, cold wind has prevailed throughout the day, quite counteracting the sun's rays; we noticed townsfolk going about in overcoats, their hands in their pockets. In the ox-bow curves, the breeze came in turn from every quarter, sometimes dead ahead and again pushing us swiftly on. In seeking the lee shore, Pilgrim pursued a zigzag course, back and forth between the States,—now under the brow of towering clay banks, corrugated by the flood, and honeycombed by swallows, which in flocks screamed and circled over our heads; again, closely brushing the fringe of willows and sycamores and maples on low-lying shores. Thus did we for the most part paddle in placid water, while above us the wind whistled in the tree-tops, rustled the blooming elders and the tall grasses of the plain, and, out in the open river, caused white-caps to dance right merrily.

We met at intervals to-day, several houseboats, the most of them bearing the inscription prescribed by the new Kentucky license law, which is now being enforced, the essential features of which inscription are the home and name of the owner, and the date at which the license expires. The standard of education among houseboaters is evinced by the legend borne by a trader's craft which we boarded near Slim Island: "Lisens exp.rs Maye the 24 1895." The young woman in charge, a slender creature in a brilliant red calico gown, with blue ribbons at the corsage, had been but recently married to her lord, who was back in the country stirring up trade. She had few notions of business, and allowed us to put our own prices on such articles as we purchased. The stock was a curious medley—a few staple groceries, bacon and dried beef, candies, crockery, hardware, tobacco, a small line of patent medicines, in which blood-purifiers chiefly prevailed, bitters, ginger beer, and a glass case in which were displayed two or three women's straw hats, gaudily-trimmed. The woman said their custom was, to tie up to some convenient shore and "buy a little stuff o' the farmers, 'n' in that way trade springs up," and thus become known. Two or three weeks would exhaust any neighborhood, whereupon they would move on for a dozen miles or so. Late in the autumn, they select a comfortable beach, and lie by for the winter.

Mt. Vernon, Ind. (819 miles), is on a high, rolling plain, with a rather pretty little court-house set in a park of grass, some good business buildings, and huge flouring-mills, which appear to be the leading industry. Another flouring-mill town, with the addition of the characteristic Kentucky distillery, is Uniontown (833 miles), on the southern shore—a bright, neat little city, backed by smooth, picturesque green hills.

The feature of the day was the entrance, through a dreary stretch of clay banks, of the Wabash River (838 miles), which divides Indiana from Illinois. Three hundred and sixty yards wide at the mouth, about half the width of the Ohio, it is the most important of the latter's northern affluents, and pours into the main stream a swift-rushing body of clear, green water, which at first boldly pushes over to the heavily-willowed Kentucky shore the roily mess of the Ohio, and for several miles exerts a considerable influence in clarification. The Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft clay bottom, runs an erratic course, and its mouth is a variable location, so that the bounds of Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, fluctuate east and west according to the exigencies of the floods. The far-reaching bottom itself, however, is apparently of slight value, giving evidence, in the dreary clumps of dead timber, of being frequently inundated.

An interesting stream is the Wabash, from an historical point of view. La Salle knew of it in 1677, and was planning to prosecute his fur trade over the Maumee and the Wabash; but the Iroquois held the portage, and for nearly forty years thereafter forbade its use by whites. Joliet thought the Wabash the headwaters of what we know as the Lower Ohio, and in his map (1673) styled the latter the Wabash, down to its mouth. Vincennes, an old Wabash town, was one of the posts captured so heroically for the Americans by George Rogers Clark, during the Revolutionary War. In 1814, there was established at New Harmony, also on the Wabash, the communistic seat of the Harmonists, who had moved thither from Pennsylvania, to which, dissatisfied with the West, they returned ten years later.

Numerous islands have to-day beautified the Ohio. Despite their inartistic names, Diamond and Slim are tipped at head and foot with charming banks and willowed sand, and each center is clothed in a luxurious forest, rimmed by a gravelly beach piled high with drift and gnarled roots: the whole, with startling clearness, inversely reflected in the mirrored flood. Wabash Island, opposite the mouth of the great tributary, is an insular woodland several miles in length.

Among the prettiest of these jewels studding our silvery path, is the upmost of the little group known as Brown's Islands, on which we are passing the night. It was an easy landing on the hard sand, and a comfortable carry to a level opening in the willows, where we have a model camp with a great round sycamore block for a table; an Evansville newspaper does duty as a tablecloth, and two logs rolled alongside make seats. Four miles below, the smoke of Shawneetown (848 miles) rises lazily above the dark level line of woods; while across the river, in Kentucky, there is an unbroken forest fringe, without sign of life as far as the eye can reach. A long glistening bar of sand connects our little island home with the Illinois mainland; upon it was being held, in the long twilight, that evening council of turkey-buzzards, which we so often witness when in an island camp. Sand-pipers went fearlessly about among them, bobbing their little tails with nervous vehemence; redbirds trilled their good-nights in the tree-tops; and, daintily wading in the sandy shallows, object lessons in patience, were great blue herons, carefully peering for the prey which never seems to be found. As night closed in upon us, owls dismally hooted in the mainland woods, buzzards betook themselves to inland roosts, herons winged their stately flight to I know not where, and over on the Kentucky shore could faintly be heard the barking of dogs at the little "cracker" farmsteads hid deep in the lowland forest.



CHAPTER XX.

Shawneetown—Farm-houses on stilts—Cave-in-Rock—An island night.

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 unsupported in mid-air. From the woods, the piercing note of locusts filled the air as with the ceaseless rattle of pebbles against innumerable window-panes.

At a distance, Shawneetown appears as if built upon higher land than the neighboring bottom; but this proves, on approach, to be an optical illusion, for the town is walled in by a levee some thirty feet in height, above the top of which loom its chimneys and spires. Shawneetown, laid out in 1808, soon became an important post on the Lower Ohio, and indeed ranked with Kaskaskia as one of the principal Illinois towns, although in 1817 it still only contained from thirty to forty log dwellings. During the reign of the Ohio-River bargemen,[A] it was notorious as the headquarters of the roughest elements in that boisterous class, and frequently the scene of most barbarous outrages—"the odious receptacle," says a chronicler of the time, "of filth and villany."

In those lively days, which lasted with more or less vigor until about 1830,—by which time, steamboats had finally overcome popular prejudice and gained the upper hand in river transportation,—the people of Shawneetown were largely dependent on the trade of the salt works of the neighboring Saline Reserve. The salt-licks—at which in early days the bones of the mammoth were found, as at Big Bone Lick—commenced a few miles below the town, and embraced a district of about ninety thousand acres. While Illinois was still a Territory, these salines were rented by the United States to individuals, but were granted to the new State (1818) in perpetuity. The trade, in time, decreased with the decadence of river traffic; and Shawneetown has since had but slow growth—it now being a dreary little place of three thousand inhabitants, with unmistakable evidences of having long since seen its best days.

The farmers upon the wide bottoms of the lower reaches now invariably have their dwellings, corn-cribs, and tobacco-sheds set upon posts, varying from five to ten feet high, according to the surrounding elevation above the normal river level. At present we are, as a rule, hemmed in by banks full thirty or forty feet in height above the present stage. After a hard climb up the steps which are frequently found cut into the clay, to facilitate access to the river, it is with something akin to awe that we look upon these buildings on stilts, for they bespeak, in times of great flood, a rise in the river of between fifty and sixty feet.

Three miles above Saline River, I scrambled up to photograph a farm-house of this character. In order to get the building within the field of the camera, it was necessary to mount a cob-house of loose rails, which did duty as a pig-pen. A young woman of eighteen or twenty years, attired in a dazzling-red calico gown, came out on the front balcony to see the operation; and, for a touch of life, I held her in talk until the picture was taken. She was not at all averse to thus posing, and chatted as familiarly as though we were old friends. The water, my model said, came at least once a year to the main floor of the house, some ten feet above the level of the land, and forty feet above the normal river stage; "every few years" it rose to the eaves of this story-and-a-half dwelling, when the family would embark in boats, hieing off to the back-lying hills, a mile-and-a-half away. An event of this sort seemed quite commonplace to the girl, and not at all to be viewed as a calamity. As in other houses of the bottom farmers of this district, there is no wall-paper, no plaster upon the walls, and little or nothing else to be injured by water. Their few household possessions can readily be packed into a scow, together with the live-stock, and behold the family is ready, if need be, to float away to the ends of the world. As a matter of fact, if they carry food enough with them, and a rain-proof tent, their season on the hills is but a prolonged picnic. When the waters sufficiently subside, they float back again to their home; the river mud is scraped out of the rooms, the kitchen-stove rubbed up a bit, and soon everything is again at rights, with a fresh layer of alluvial deposit to fertilize the fields.

Few of these small farmers own the lands they till; from Pittsburg down, the great majority of Ohio River planters are but tenants. The old families that once owned the soil are living in the neighboring towns, or in other parts of the country, and renting out their acres to these cultivators. We were told that the rental fee around Owensboro is usually in kind,—fourteen bushels of good, salable corn being the rate per acre. In "Egypt," as Southern Illinois is called, the average rent is four or five dollars in money, except in years when the water remains long upon the ground, and thus shortens the season; then the fee is correspondingly reduced. The girl on the balcony averred, that in 1893 it amounted to one-third the value of the average yield.

The numerous huge stilted corn cribs we see are constructed so that wagons can drive up into them, and, after unloading in bins on either side, descend another incline at the far end. Sometimes a portion of the crib is boarded up for a residence, with windows, and a little balcony which does double duty as a porch and a landing-stage for the boats in time of high water. Scattered about on the level are loosely-built sheds of rails, for stock, which practically live al fresco, so far as actual storm-shelter goes.

Usually the flooded bottoms are denuded of trees, save perhaps a narrow fringe along the bank, and a few dead trunks scattered here and there; while back, a third or a half-mile from the river, lies a dense line of forest, far beyond which rises the low rim of the basin. But just below Saline River (857 miles), a lazy little stream of a few rods' width, the hills, now perhaps eighty or a hundred feet in height, again approach to the water's edge; and henceforth to the mouth we are to have alternating semi-circular, wooded bottoms and shaly, often palisaded uplands, grown to scrub and vines much in the fashion of some of the middle reaches. A trading-boat was moored just within the Saline, where we stopped for lunch under a clump of sycamores. The owner obtains butter and eggs from the farmers, in exchange for his varied wares, and sells them at a goodly profit to passing steamers, which will always stop when flagged.

Approaching Cave-in-Rock, Ill. (869 miles), the right bank is for several miles an almost continuous palisade of lime-stone, thick-studded with black and brown flints. In the breaking down of this escarpment, popularly styled Battery Rocks, numerous caves have been formed, the largest of which gave the place its name. It is a rather low opening into the rock, perhaps two hundred feet deep, and the floor some twenty feet above the present level of the river; in times of flood, it is frequently so filled with water that boats enter, and thousands of silly people have, in two or three generations past, carved or painted their names upon the vaulted roof.[B] From this large entrance hall, a chimney-like hole in the roof leads to other chambers, said to be imposing and widely ramified—"not unlike a Gothic cathedral," said Ashe, an early English traveler (1806), who appears to have everywhere in these Western wilds sought the marvellous, and found it. About 1801, a band of robbers made these inner recesses their home, and frequently sallied thence to rob passing boats, and incidentally to murder the crews. As for the little hamlet of Cave-in-Rock, nestled in a break in the palisade, a few hundred yards below, it was, between 1801 and 1805, the seat of another species of brigandage—a land speculation, wherein schemers waxed rich from the confusion engendered by conflicting claims of settlers, the outgrowth of carelessly-phrased Indian treaties and overlapping French and English patents. From 1804 to 1810, a Congressional committee was engaged in straightening out this weary tangle; and its decisions, ratified by Congress, are to-day the foundation of many land-titles in Indiana and Illinois.

We are in camp to-night upon the Illinois shore, opposite Half-Moon Bar (872 miles), and a mile above Hurricane Island. Towering above us are great sycamores, cypress, maples, and elms, and all about a dense jungle of grasses, vines, and monster weeds—the rank horse-weed being now some ten feet high, with a stem an inch in diameter; the dead stalks of last year's growth, in the broad rolling fields to our rear, indicate a possibility of sixteen feet, and an apparent desire to out-rival the corn. Cane-brake, too, is prevalent hereabout, with stalks two inches or more thick. The mulberries are reddening, the Doctor reports on his return with the Boy from a botanizing expedition, and black-caps are turning; while bergamot and vervain are among the plants newly added to the herbarium.

* * * * *

Stewart's Island, Friday, 8th.—We arose this morning to find the tent as wet from dew and fog as if there had been a shower, and the bushes by the landing were sparkling with great beads of moisture. The bold, black head of Hurricane Island stood out with startling distinctness, framed in rolling fog; through a cloud-bank on the horizon, the sun was bursting with the dull glow of burnished copper. By the time of starting, the fog had lifted, and the sun swung clear in a steel-blue sky; but there was still a soft haze on land and river, which dreamily closed the ever-changing vistas, and we seemed to float through an enchanted land.

The approach to Elizabethtown, Ill. (877 miles), is picturesque; but of the dry little town of seven hundred souls, with its rocky, undulating streets set in a break in the line of palisades, very little is to be seen from the river. Quarrying for paving-stones appears to be the chief pursuit of the Elizabethans. At Rose Clare, Ill., a string of shanties three miles below, are two idle plants of the Argyle Lead and Fluor-Spar Mining Co. Carrsville, Ky., is another arid, hillside hamlet, with striking escarpments stretching above and below for several miles. Mammoth boulders, a dozen or more feet in height, relics doubtless of once formidable cliffs, here line the riverside. The palisaded hills reappear in Illinois, commencing at Parkinson's Landing, a dreary little settlement on a waste of barren, stony slope flanking the perpendicular wall.

Just above Golconda Island (890 miles), on the Illinois side, we were witness to a "meet" of farmers for a squirrel-hunt, a favorite amusement in these parts. There were five men upon a side, all carrying guns; as we passed, they were shaking hands, preparatory to separating for the battue. Upon the bank above, in a grove of cypress, pawpaw, and sycamore, their horses were standing, unhitched from the poles of the wagons in which they had been driven, and, tied to trees, feeding from boxes set upon the ground. It was pleasant to see that these people, who must lead dreary lives upon the malaria-stricken and flood-washed bottoms, occasionally take a holiday with a spice of rational adventure in it; although there is the probability that this squirrel-hunt may be followed to-night by a roystering at the village tavern, the losing side paying the score.

We reached Stewart's Island (901 miles) at five o'clock, and went into camp upon the landing-beach of hard, white sand, facing Kentucky. The island is two miles long, the owner living in Bird's Point Landing, Ky., just below us—a rather shabby but picturesquely-situated little village, at the base of pretty, wooded hills. A hundred and fifty acres of the island are planted to corn, and the owner's laborers—a white overseer and five blacks—are housed a half-mile above us, in a rude cabin half-hidden in a generous maple grove.

The white man soon came down to the strand, riding his mule, and both drank freely from the muddy river. He was a fairly-intelligent young fellow, and proud of his mount—no need of lines, he said, for "this yer mule; ye on'y say 'gee!' and 'haw!' and he done git thar ev'ry time, sir-r! 'Pears to me, he jist done think it out to hisself, like a man would. Hit ain't no use try'n' boss that yere mule, he's thet ugly when he's sot on 't—but jist pat him on th' naick and say, 'So thar, Solomon!' and thar ain't no one knows how to act better 'n he."

As we were at dinner, in the twilight, the five negroes also came riding down the angling roadway, in picturesque single file, singing snatches of camp-meeting songs in that weird minor key with which we are so familiar in "jubilee" music. Across the river, a Kentucky darky, riding a mule along the dusky woodland road at the base of the hills, and evidently going home from his work in the fields, was singing at the top of his bent, apparently as a stimulus to failing courage. Our islanders shouted at him in derision. The shoreman's replies, which lacked not for spice, came clear and sharp across the half-mile of smooth water, and his tormentors quickly ceased chaffing. Having all drunk copiously, men and mules resumed their line of march up the bank, and disappeared as they came, still chanting the crude melodies of their people. An hour later, we could hear them at the cabin, singing "John Brown's Body" and other old friends—with the moon, bright and clear in its first quarter, adding a touch of romance to the scene.

[Footnote A: See Chapter XIII.]

[Footnote B: "Scrawled over by that class of aspiring travelers who defile noble monuments with their worthless names."—Irving, in The Alhambra.]



CHAPTER XXI.

The Cumberland and the Tennessee—Stately Solitudes—Old Fort Massac—Dead towns in Egypt—The last camp—Cairo.

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, he got too loud voice!" Then, when he had left our camp and regained the top of the bank, he leaned upon his hoe and yelled: "Say, niggah, ober dere! whar you git dat mule?"

"Who you holl'rin' at, you brack island niggah?" was the quick reply.

"You lan' niggah, you tink you smart!"

"I'se so smart, I done want no liv'n' on island, wi' gang boss, 'n not 'lowed go 'way!"

The tuneful darky had evidently here touched a tender spot, for our man turned back into the field to his work; and the other, kicking the mule into action, trotted off to the tune of "Dar's a meet'n' here, to-night!"

We went up into the field, to see the laborers cultivating corn. The sun was blazing hot, without a breath of air stirring, but the great black fellows seemed to mind it not, chattering away to themselves like magpies, and keeping up their conversation by shouts, when separated from each other at the ends of plow-rows. A natural levee, eight and ten feet high, and studded with large tree-willows, rims in the island farm like the edge of a basin. We were told that this served as a barrier only against the June "fresh," for the regular spring floods invariably swamp the place; but what is left within the bowl, when the outer waters subside, soon leaches through the sandy soil.

After passing the pretty shores of Dog Island, not far below, the bold, dark headland of Cumberland Island soon bursts upon our view. We follow the narrow eastern channel, in order to greet the Cumberland River (909 miles), which half-way down its island name-sake,—at the woe-begone little village of Smithland, Ky.—empties a generous flood into the Ohio. The Cumberland, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile wide, debouches through high clay banks, which might readily be melted in the turbulent cross-currents produced by the mingling of the rivers; but to avoid this, the government engineers have built a wing-dam running out from the foot of the Cumberland, nearly half-way into the main river. This quickly unites the two streams, and the reinforced Ohio is thereafter perceptibly widened.

Tramp steamers are numerous, on these lower reaches. We have seen perhaps a dozen such to-day, stopping at the farm landings as well as at the crude and infrequent hamlets,—mere notches of settlement in the wooded lines of shore,—doing a small business in chance cargoes and in passengers who flag them from the bank. A sultry atmosphere has been with us through the day. The glassy surface of the river has, when not lashed into foam by passing boats, dazzled the eyes most painfully. The hills, from below Stewart's Island, have receded on either side, generally leaving either low, broad, heavily-timbered bottoms, or high clay banks which stretch back wide plains of yellow and gray corn-land—frequently inundated, but highly productive. Now and then the encroaching river has remained too long in some belt of forest, and we have great clumps of dead trees, which spring aloft in stately picturesqueness, thickly-clad to the limb-tips with Virginia creeper. A bit of shaly hillside occasionally abuts upon the river, though less frequently than above; and often such a spur has lying at its feet a row of half-immersed boulders, delicately carpeted with mosses and with clinging vines.

The Tennessee River (918 miles), the largest of the Ohio's tributaries, is, where it enters, about half the width of the latter. Coming down through a broad, forested bottom, with several pretty islands off its mouth, it presents a pleasing picture. Here again the government has been obliged to put in costly works to stop the ravages of the mingling torrents in the soft alluvial banks. The Ohio, with the united waters of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, henceforth flows majestically to the Mississippi, a full mile wide between her shores.

Paducah (13,000 inhabitants), next to Louisville Kentucky's most important river port, lies on a high plain just below the Tennessee. It is a stirring little city, with the usual large proportion of negroes, and the out-door business life everywhere met with in the South. Saw-mills, iron plants, and ship-yards line the bank; at the wharf are large steamers doing a considerable business up the Cumberland and Tennessee, and between Paducah and Cairo and St. Louis; and there is a considerable ferry business to and from the Illinois suburb of Brooklyn.

Seven miles below the Tennessee, on the Illinois side, we sought relief from the blazing sun within the mouth of Seven Mile Creek, which is cut deep through sloping banks of mud, and overhung by great sprawling sycamores. These always interest us from the generosity of their height and girth, and from their great variety of color-tones, induced by the patchy scaling of the bark—soft grays, buffs, greens, and ivory whites prevailing. When sufficiently refreshed in this cool bower, we ventured once more into the fierce light of the open river, and two miles below shot into the broader and more inviting Massac Creek (928 miles), just as, of old, George Rogers Clark did with his little flotilla, when en route to capture Kaskaskia. Clark, in his Journal written long after the event, said that this creek is a mile above Fort Massac; his memory failed him—as a matter of fact, the steep, low hill of iron-stained gravel and clay, on which the old stronghold was built, is but two hundred yards below.[A]

The French commander who, in October, 1758, evacuated and burned Fort Duquesne on the approach of the English army under General Forbes, dropped down the Ohio for nearly a thousand miles, and built "a new fort on a beautiful eminence on the north bank of the river." But there was a fortified post on this hillock at a much earlier date (about 1711), erected as a headquarters for missionaries, and to guard French fur-traders from marauding Cherokees; and Pownall's map notes one here in 1751. This fort of 1758 was but an enlarged edition of the old. The new stronghold, with a garrison of a hundred men, was the last built by the French upon the Ohio, and it was occupied by them until they evacuated the country in 1763. England does not appear to have made any attempt to repair and occupy the works then destroyed by the French, although urged to do so by her military agents in the West. Had they held Fort Massac, no doubt Clark's expedition to capture the Northwest for the Americans might easily have been nipped in the bud; as it was, the old fortress was a ruin when he "reposed" on the banks of the creek at its feet.

When, in 1793-1794, the French agent Genet was fomenting his scheme for capturing Louisiana and Florida from Spain, by the aid of Western filibusters, old Fort Massac was thought of as a rallying-point and base of supplies; but St. Clair's proclamation of March 24, 1794, ordering General Wayne to restore and garrison the place, for the purpose of preventing the proposed expedition from passing down the river, ended the conspiracy, and Genet left the country. A year later, Spain, who had at intervals sought to detach the Westerners from the Union, and ally them with her interests beyond the Mississippi, renewed her attempts at corrupting the Kentuckians, and gained to her cause no less a man than George Rogers Clark himself. Among other designs, Fort Massac was to be captured by the adventurers, whom Spain was to supply with the sinews of war. There was much mysterious correspondence between the latter's corruption agent, Thomas Power, and the American General Wilkinson, at Detroit; but finally Power, in disguise, was sent out of the country under guard, by way of Fort Massac, and his escape into Spanish territory practically ended this interesting episode in Western history. The fort was occupied as a military post by our government until the close of the War of 1812-15; what we see to-day, are the ruins of the establishment then abandoned.

No doubt the face of this rugged promontory of gravel has, within a century, suffered much from floods; but the remains of the earthwork on the crest of the cliff, some fifty feet above the present river-stage, are still easily traceable throughout. The fort was about forty yards square, with a bastion at each corner; there are the remains of an unstoned well near the center; the ditch surrounding the earthwork is still some two-and-a-half or three feet below the surrounding level, and the breastwork about two feet above the inner level; no doubt, palisades once surmounted the work, and were relied upon as the chief protection from assault. The grounds, a pleasant grassy grove several acres in extent, are now enclosed by a rail fence, and neatly maintained as a public park by the little city of Metropolis, which lies not far below. It was a commanding view of land and river, which was enjoyed by the garrison of old Fort Massac. Up stream, there is a straight stretch of eleven miles to the mouth of the Tennessee; both up and down, the shore lines are under full survey, until they melt away in the distance. No enemy could well surprise the holders of this key to the Lower Ohio.

Our camp is on the sandy beach opposite Metropolis, and two hundred yards below the Kentucky end of the ferry. Behind us lies a deep forest, with sycamores six and eight feet in diameter; a country road curving off through the woods, to the sparse rustic settlement lying some two miles in the interior—on higher ground than this wooded bottom, which is annually overflowed. Now and then the blustering little steam-ferry comes across to land Kentucky farm-folk and their mules, going home from a Saturday's shopping in Metropolis. Occasionally a fisherman passes, lagging on his oars to scan us and our quarters; and from one of them, we purchased a fish. As the still, cool night crept on, Metropolis was astir; across the mile of intervening water, darted tremulous shafts of light; we heard voices singing and laughing, a fiddle in its highest notes, the puffing of a stationary engine, and the bay and yelp of countless dogs. Later, a packet swooped down with smothered roar, and threw its electric search-light on the city wharf, revealing a crowd of negroes gathered there, like moths in the radiance of a candle; there were gay shouts, and a mad scampering—we could see it all, as plainly as if in ordinary light it had been but a third of the distance; and then the roustabouts struck up a weird song as they ran out the gang-plank, and, laden with boxes and bales, began swarming ashore, like a procession of black ants carrying pupa cases.

* * * * *

Mound City Towhead, Sunday, 10th.—During the night, burglarious pigs would have raided our larder, but the crash of a falling kettle wakened us suddenly, as did geese the ancient Romans. The Doctor and I sallied forth in our pajamas, with clods of clay in hand, to send the enemy flying back into the forest, snorting and squealing with baffled rage.

We were afloat at half-past seven, under an unclouded sky, with the sun sharply reflected from the smooth surface of the river, and the temperature rapidly mounting.

The Fort Massac ridge extends down stream as far as Mound City, but soon degenerates into a ridge of clay varying in height from twenty-five to fifty feet above the water level. Upon the low-lying bottom of the Kentucky shore, is still an interminable dark line of forest. The settlements are meager, and now wholly in Illinois: For instance, Joppa (936 miles), a row of a half-dozen unpainted, dilapidated buildings, chiefly stores and abandoned warehouses, bespeaking a river traffic of the olden time, that has gone to decay; a hot, dreary, baking spot, this Joppa, as it lies sprawling upon the clay ridge, flanked by a low, wide gravel beach, on which gaunt, bell-ringing cows are wandering, eating the leaves of fallen trees, for lack of better pasturage. Our pilot map, of sixty years ago, records the presence of Wilkinsonville (942 miles), on the site of old Fort Wilkinson of the War of 1812-15, but no one along the banks appears to have ever heard of it; however, after much searching, we found the place for ourselves, on an eminence of fifty feet, with two or three farm-houses as the sole relics of the old establishment. Caledonia (Olmstead P.O.), nine miles down, consists of several large buildings on a hill set well back from the river. Mound City (959 miles),—the "America" of our time-worn map,—in whose outskirts we are camped to-night, is a busy town with furniture factories, lumber mills, ship-yards, and a railway transfer. Below that, stretches the vast extent of swamp and low woodland on which Cairo (967 miles) has with infinite pains been built—like "brave little Holland," holding her own against the floods solely by virtue of her encircling dike.

Houseboats have been few, to-day, and they of the shanty order and generally stranded high upon the beach. One sees now and then, on the Illinois ridge, the cheap log or frame house of a "cracker," the very picture of desolate despair; but on the Kentucky shore are few signs of life, for the bottom lies so low that it is frequently inundated, and settlement ventures no nearer than two or three miles from the riverside. A fisherman comes occasionally into view, upon this wide expanse of wood and water and clay-banks; sometimes we hail him in passing, always getting a respectful answer, but a stare of innocent curiosity.

Our last home upon the Ohio is facing the Kentucky shore, on the cleanly sand-beach of Mound City Towhead, a small island which in times of high water is but a bar. The tent is screened in a willow clump; just below us, on higher ground, sycamores soar heavenward, gayly festooned with vines, hiding from us Mound City and the Illinois mainland. Across the river, a Kentucky negro is singing in the gloaming; but it is over a mile away, and, while the tune is plain, the words are lost. Children's voices, and the bay of hounds, come wafted to us from the northern shore. A steamer's wake rolls along our island strand, dangerously near the camp-fire; the river is still falling, however, and we no longer fear the encroachments of the flood. The Doctor and I found a secluded nook, where in the moonlight we took our final plunge.

It is sad, this bidding good-bye to the stream which has floated us so merrily for a thousand miles, from the mountains down to the plain. We elders linger long by the last camp-fire, to talk in fond reminiscence of the six weeks afloat; while the Boy no doubt dreams peacefully of houseboats and fishermen, of gigantic bridges and flashing steel-plants, of coal-mines and oil-wells, of pioneers and Indians, and all that—of six weeks of kaleidoscopic sensations, at an age when the mind is keenly active, and the heart open to impressions which can never be dimmed so long as his little life shall last.

* * * * *

Cairo, Monday, 11th.—At our island camp, last night, we were but nine miles from the mouth of the Ohio, a distance which could easily have been made before sundown; but we preferred to reach our destination in the morning, the better to arrange for railway transportation, hence our agreeable pause upon the Towhead.

Before embarking for the last run, this morning, we made a neat heap on the beach, of such of our stores, edible and wearable, as had been requisite to the trip, but were not worth the cost of sending home. Feeling confident that some passing fisherman would soon be tempted ashore to inspect this curious landmark, and yet might be troubled by nice scruples as to the policy of appropriating the find, we conspicuously labeled it: "Abandoned by the owners! The finder is welcome to the lot."

Quickly passing Mound City, now bustling with life, Pilgrim closely skirted the monotonous clay-banks of Illinois, swept rapidly under the monster railway bridge which stalks high above the flood, and loses itself over the tree-tops of the Kentucky bottom, and at a quarter-past eight o'clock was pulled up at Cairo, with the Mississippi in plain sight over there, through the opening in the forest. In another hour or two, she will be housed in a box-car; and we, her crew, having again donned the garb of landsmen, will be speeding toward our northern home, this pilgrimage but a memory.

Such a memory! As we dropped below the Towhead, the Boy, for once silent, wistfully gazed astern. When at last Pilgrim had been hauled upon the railway levee, and the Doctor and I had gone to summon a shipping clerk, the lad looked pleadingly into W——'s face. In tones half-choked with tears, he expressed the sentiment of all: "Mother, is it really ended? Why can't we go back to Brownsville, and do it all over again?"

[Footnote A: "In the evening of the same day I ran my Boats into a small Creek about one mile above the old Fort Missack; Reposed ourselves for the night, and in the morning took a Rout to the Northwest."—Clark's letter to Mason.]



APPENDIX A.

Historical outline of Ohio Valley settlement.

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 portages through the forest jungles. Twenty years later (1606), Christopher Newport and the redoubtable John Smith, of Jamestown, ascended the James as far as the falls—now Richmond, Va.; and Newport himself, the following year, succeeded in reaching a point forty miles beyond, but here again was appalled by the difficulties and returned.

There was, after this, a deal of brave talk about scaling the mountains; but nothing further was done until 1650, when Edward Bland and Edward Pennant again tried the Roanoke, though without penetrating the wilderness far beyond Lane's turning point. It is recorded that, in 1669, John Lederer, an adventurous German surgeon, commissioned as an explorer by Governor Berkeley, ascended to the summit of the Blue Ridge, in Madison County, Va.; but although he was once more on the spot the following season, with a goodly company of horsemen and Indians, and had a bird's-eye view of the over-mountain country, he does not appear to have descended into the world of woodland which lay stretched between him and the setting sun. It seems to be well established that the very next year (1671), a party under Abraham Wood, one of Governor Berkeley's major-generals, penetrated as far as the Great Falls of the Great Kanawha, only eighty miles from the Ohio—doubtless the first English exploration of waters flowing into the latter river. The Great Kanawha was, by Wood himself, called New River, but the geographers of the time styled it Wood's. The last title was finally dropped; the stream above the mouth of the Gauley is, however, still known as New. These several adventurers had now demonstrated that while the waters beyond the mountains were not the Western Ocean, they possibly led to such a sea; and it came to be recognized, too, that the continent was not as narrow as had up to this time been supposed.

Meanwhile, the French of Canada were casting eager eyes toward the Ohio, as a gateway to the continental interior. But the French-hating Iroquois held fast the upper waters of the Mohawk, Delaware, and Susquehanna, and the long but narrow watershed sloping northerly to the Great Lakes, so that the westering Ohio was for many years sealed to New France. An important factor in American history this, for it left the great valley practically free from whites while the English settlements were strengthening on the seaboard; when at last the French were ready aggressively to enter upon the coveted field, they had in the English colonists formidable and finally successful rivals.

It is believed by many, and the theory is not unreasonable, that the great French fur-trader and explorer, La Salle, was at the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville) "in the autumn or early winter of 1669." How he got there, is another question. Some antiquarians believe that he reached the Alleghany by way of the Chautauqua portage, and descended the Ohio to the Falls; others, that he ascended the Maumee from Lake Erie, and, descending the Wabash, thus, discovered the Ohio. It was reserved for the geographer Franquelin to give, in his map of 1688, the first fairly-accurate idea of the Ohio's path; and Father Hennepin's large map of 1697 showed that much had meanwhile been learned about the river.

No doubt, by this time, the great waterway was well-known to many of the most adventurous French and English fur-traders, possibly better to the latter than to the former; unfortunately, these men left few records behind them, by which to trace their discoveries. As early as 1684, we incidentally hear of the Ohio as a principal route for the Iroquois, who brought peltries "from the direction of the Illinois" to the English at Albany, and the French at Quebec. Two years after this, ten English trading-canoes, loaded with goods, were seen on Lake Erie by French agents, who in great alarm wrote home to Quebec about them. Writes De Nonville to Seignelay, "I consider it a matter of importance to preclude the English from this trade, as they doubtless would entirely ruin ours—as well by the cheaper bargains they would give the Indians, as by attracting to themselves the French of our colony who are in the habit of resorting to the woods."

Herein lay the gist of the whole matter: The legalized monopoly granted to the great fur-trade companies of New France, with the official corruption necessary to create and perpetuate that monopoly, made the French trade an expensive business, consequently goods were dear. On the other hand, the trade of the English was untrammeled, and a lively competition lowered prices. The French cajoled the Indians, and fraternized with them in their camps; whereas, the English despised the savages, and made little attempt to disguise their sentiments. The French, while claiming all the country west of the Alleghanies, cared little for agricultural colonization; they would keep the wilderness intact, for the fostering of wild animals, upon the trade in whose furs depended the welfare of New France—and this, too, was the policy of the savage. By English statesmen at home, our continental interior was also chiefly prized for its forest trade, which yielded rich returns for the merchant adventurers of London. The policies of the English colonists and of their general government were ever clashing. The latter looked upon the Indian trade as an entering wedge; they thought of the West as a place for growth. Close upon the heels of the path-breaking trader, went the cattle-raiser, and, following him, the agricultural settler looking for cheap, fresh, and broader lands. No edicts of the Board of Trade could repress these backwoodsmen; savages could and did beat them back for a time, but the annals of the border are lurid with the bloody struggle of the borderers for a clearing in the Western forest. The greater part of them were Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas—a hardy race, who knew not defeat. Steadily they pushed back the rampart of savagery, and won the Ohio valley for civilization.

The Indian early recognized the land-grabbing temper of the English, and felt that a struggle to the death was impending. The French browbeat their savage allies, and, easily inflaming their passions, kept the body of them almost continually at war with the English—the Iroquois excepted, not because the latter were English-lovers, or did not understand the aim of English colonization, but because the earliest French had won their undying enmity. Amidst all this weary strife, the Indian, a born trader who dearly loved a bargain, never failed to recognize that the goods of his French friends were dear, and that those of his enemies, the English, were cheap. We find frequent evidences that for a hundred years the tribesmen of the Upper Lakes carried on an illicit trade with the hated English, whenever the usually-wary French were thought to be napping.

It is certain that English forest traders were upon the Ohio in the year 1700. In 1715,—the year before Governor Spotswood of Virginia, "with much feasting and parade," made his famous expedition over the Blue Ridge,—there was a complaint that traders from Carolina had reached the villages on the Wabash, and were poaching on the French preserves. French military officers built little log stockades along that stream, and tried in vain to induce the Indians of the valley to remove to St. Joseph's River, out of the sphere of English influence. Everywhere did French traders meet English competitors, who were not to be frightened by orders to move off the field. New France, therefore, determined to connect Canada and Louisiana by a chain of forts throughout the length of the Mississippi basin, which should not only secure untrammeled communication between these far-separated colonies, but aid in maintaining French supremacy throughout the region. Yet in 1725 we still hear of "the English from Carolina" busily trading with the Miamis under the very shadow of the guns of Fort Ouiatanon (near Lafayette, Ind.), and the French still vainly scolding thereat. What was going on upon the Wabash, was true elsewhere in the Ohio basin, as far south as the Creek towns on the sources of the Tennessee.

About this time, Pennsylvania and Virginia began to exhibit interest in their own overlapping claims to lands in the country northwest of the Ohio. Those colonies were now settled close to the base of the mountains, and there was heard a popular clamor for pastures new. French ownership of the over-mountain region was denied, and in 1728 Pennsylvania "viewed with alarm the encroachments of the French." The issue was now joined; both sides claimed the field, but, as usual, the contest was at first among the rival forest traders. In the Virginia and Pennsylvania capitals, the transmontane country was still a misty region. In 1729, Col. William Byrd, an authority on things Virginian, was able to write that nothing was then known in that colony of the sources of the Potomac, Roanoke, and Shenandoah. It was not until 1736 that Col. William Mayo, in laying out the boundaries of Lord Fairfax's generous estate, discovered in the Alleghanies the head-spring of the Potomac, where ten years later was planted the famous "Fairfax Stone," the southwest point of the boundary between Virginia and Maryland. That very same year (1746), M. de Lery, chief engineer of New France, went with a detachment of troops from Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake, and proceeded thence by Conewango Creek and Alleghany River to the Ohio, which he carefully surveyed down to the mouth of the Great Miami.

Affairs moved slowly in those days. New France was corrupt and weak, and the English colonists, unaided by the home government, were not strong. For many years, nothing of importance came out of this rivalry of French and English in the Ohio Valley, save the petty quarrels of fur-traders, and the occasional adventure of some Englishman taken prisoner by Indians in a border foray, and carried far into the wilderness to meet with experiences the horror of which, as preserved in their published narratives, to this day causes the blood of the reader to curdle.

Now and then, there were voluntary adventurers into these strange lands. Such were John Howard, John Peter Salling, and two other Virginians who, the story goes, went overland (1740 or 1741) under commission of their inquisitive governor, to explore the country to the Mississippi. They went down Coal and Wood's Rivers to the Ohio, which in Salling's journal is called the "Alleghany." Finally, a party of French, negroes, and Indians took them prisoners and carried them to New Orleans, where on meager fare they were held in prison for eighteen months. They escaped at last, and had many curious adventures by land and sea, until they reached home, from which they had been absent two years and three months. There are now few countries on the globe where a party of travelers could meet with adventures such as these.

At last, the plot thickened; the tragedy was hastened to a close. France now formally asserted her right to all countries drained by streams emptying into the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. This vast empire would have extended from the comb of the Rockies on the west—discovered in 1743 by the brothers La Verendrye—to the crest of the Appalachians on the east, thus including the western part of New York and New England. The narrow strip of the Atlantic coast alone would have been left to the domination of Great Britain. The demand made by France, if acceded to, meant the death-blow to English colonization on the American mainland; and yet it was made not without reason. French explorers, missionaries, and fur-traders had, with great enterprise and fortitude, swarmed over the entire region, carrying the flag, the religion, and the commerce of France into the farthest forest wilds; while the colonists of their rival, busy in solidly welding their industrial commonwealths, had as yet scarcely peeped over the Alleghany barrier.

It was asserted on behalf of Great Britain, that the charters of her coast colonies carried their bounds far into the West; further, that as, by the treaty of Utrecht (1713), France had acknowledged the suzerainty of the British king over the Iroquois confederacy, the English were entitled to all lands "conquered" by those Indians, whose war-paths had extended from the Ottawa River on the north to the Carolinas on the south, and whose forays reached alike to the Mississippi and to New England. In this view was made, in 1744, the famous treaty at Lancaster, Pa., whereat the Iroquois, impelled by rum and presents, pretended to give to the English entire control of the Ohio Valley, under the claim that the former had in various encounters conquered the Shawanese of that region and were therefore entitled to it. It is obvious that a country occasionally raided by marauding bands of savages, whose homes are far away, cannot properly be considered theirs by conquest.

Meanwhile, both sides were preparing to occupy and hold the contested field. New France already had a weak chain of waterside forts and commercial stations,—the rendezvous of fur-traders, priests, travelers, and friendly Indians,—extending, with long intervening stretches of savage-haunted wilderness, through the heart of the continent, from Lower Canada to her outlying post of New Orleans. It is not necessary here to enter into the details of the ensuing French and Indian War, the story of which Parkman has told us so well. Suffice it briefly to mention a few only of its features, so far as they affect the Ohio itself.

The Iroquois, although concluding with the English this treaty of Lancaster, "on which, as a corner-stone, lay the claim of the colonists to the West," were by this time, as the result of wily French diplomacy, growing suspicious of their English protectors; at the same time, having on several occasions been severely punished by the French, they were less rancorous in their opposition to New France. For this reason, just as the English were getting ready to make good their claim to the Ohio by actual colonization, the Iroquois began to let in the French at the back door. In 1749, Galissoniere, then governor of New France, dispatched to the great valley a party of soldiers under Celoron de Bienville, with directions to conduct a thorough exploration, to bury at the mouths of principal streams lead plates graven with the French claim,—a custom of those days,—and to drive out English traders, Celoron proceeded over the Lake Chautauqua route, from Lake Erie to the Alleghany River, and thence down the Ohio to the Miami, returning to Lake Erie over the old Maumee portage. English traders, who could not be driven out, were found swarming into the country, and his report was discouraging. The French realized that they could not maintain connection between New Orleans and their settlements on the St. Lawrence, if driven from the Ohio valley. The governor sent home a plea for the shipment of ten thousand French peasants to settle the region; but the government at Paris was just then as indifferent to New France as was King George to his colonies, and the settlers were not sent.

Meanwhile, the English were not idle. The first settlement they made west of the mountains, was on New River, a branch of the Kanawha (1748); in the same season, several adventurous Virginians hunted and made land-claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. Before the close of the following year (1749), there had been formed, for fur-trading and colonizing purposes, the Ohio Company, composed of wealthy Virginians, among whom were two brothers of Washington. King George granted the company five hundred thousand acres, south of and along the Ohio River, on which they were to plant a hundred families and build and maintain a fort. As a base of supplies, they built a fortified trading-house at Will's Creek (now Cumberland, Md.), near the head of the Potomac, and developed a trail ("Nemacolin's Path"), sixty miles long, across the Laurel Hills to the mouth of Redstone Creek, on the Monongahela, where was built another stockade (1752).

Christopher Gist, a famous backwoodsman, was sent (1750), the year after Celoron's expedition, to explore the country as far down as the falls of the Ohio, and select lands for the new company. Gist's favorable report greatly stimulated interest in the Western country. In his travels, he met many Scotch-Irish fur-traders who had passed into the West through the mountain valleys of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. His negotiations with the natives were of great value to the English cause.

It was early seen, by English and French alike, that an immense advantage would accrue to the nation first in possession of what is now the site of Pittsburg, the meeting-place of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers to form the Ohio—the "Forks of the Ohio," as it was then called. In the spring of 1753, a French force occupied the new fifteen-mile portage route between Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.) and French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany. On the banks of French Creek they built Fort Le Boeuf, a stout log-stockade. It had been planned to erect another fort at the Forks of the Ohio, one hundred and twenty miles below; but disease in the camp prevented the completion of the scheme.

What followed is familiar to all who have taken any interest whatever in Western history. In November, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent one of his major-generals, young George Washington, with Gist as a companion, to remonstrate with the French at Le Boeuf for occupying land "so notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great Britain." The French politely turned the messengers back. In the following April (1754), Washington set out with a small command, by the way of Will's Creek, to forcibly occupy the Forks. His advance party were building a fort there, when the French appeared and easily drove them off. Then followed Washington's defeat at Great Meadows (July 4). The French were now supreme at their new Fort Duquesne. The following year, General Braddock set out from Virginia, also by Nemacolin's Path; but, on that fateful ninth of July, fell in the slaughter-pen which had been set for him at Turtle Creek by the Indians of the Upper Lakes, under the leadership of a French fur-trader from far-off Wisconsin.

From the time of Braddock's defeat until the close of the war, French traders, with savage allies, poured the vials of their wrath upon the encroaching settlements of the English backwoodsmen. Nemacolin's Path, now known as Braddock's Road, made for the Indians of the Ohio an easy pathway to the English borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. In the parallel valleys of the Alleghanies was waged a partisan warfare, which in bitterness has probably not had its equal in all the long history of the efforts of expanding civilization to beat down the encircling walls of barbarism. In 1758, Canada was attacked by several English expeditions, the most of which were successful. One of these was headed by General John Forbes, and directed against Fort Duquesne. After a remarkable forest march, overcoming mighty obstacles, Forbes arrived at his destination to find that the French had blown up the fortifications, some of the troops retreating to Lake Erie and others to rehabilitate Fort Massac on the Lower Ohio.

Thus England gained possession of the valley. New France had been cut in twain. The English Fort Pitt commanded the Forks of the Ohio, and French rule in America was now doomed. The fall of Quebec soon followed (1759), then of Montreal (1760); and in 1763 was signed the Treaty of Paris, by which England obtained possession of all the territory east of the Mississippi River, except the city of New Orleans and a small outlying district. In order to please the savages of the interior, and to cultivate the fur-trade,—perhaps also, to act as a check upon the westward growth of the too-ambitious coast colonies,—King George III. took early occasion to command his "loving subjects" in America not to purchase or settle lands beyond the mountains, "without our especial leave and license." It is needless to say that this injunction was not obeyed. The expansion of the English colonies in America was irresistible; the Great West was theirs, and they proceeded in due time to occupy it.