Afloat on the Ohio Part 4

Blennerha.s.sett's Island, Sunday, May 13th.--The day broke without fog, at our camp on the rocky steep above Marietta. The eastern sky was veiled with summer clouds, all gayly flushed by the rising sun, and in the serene silence of the morning there hung the scent of dew, and earth, and trees. In the east, the distant edges of the West Virginia hills were aglow with the mounting light before it had yet peeped over into the river trough, where a silvery haze lent peculiar charm to flood and bank. Up river, one of the Three Brothers isles, dark and heavily forested, seemed in the middle ground to float on air. A bewitching picture this, until at last the sun sprang clear and strong above the fringing hills, and the spell was broken.

The steamboat traffic is improving as we get lower down. Last evening, between landing and bedtime, a half dozen pa.s.sed us, up and down, breathing heavily as dragons might, and leaving behind them foamy wakes which loudly broke upon the sh.o.r.e. Before morning, I was at intervals awakened by as many more. A striking spectacle, the pa.s.sage of a big river steamer in the night; you hear, fast approaching, a labored pant; suddenly, around the bend, or emerging from behind an island, the long white monster glides into view, lanterns gleaming on two lines of deck, her electric searchlight uneasily flitting to and fro, first on one landmark, then on another, her engine bell sharply clanging, the measured pant developing into a burly, all-pervading roar, which gradually declines into a pant again--and then she disappears as she came, her swelling wake rudely ruffling the moonlit stream.

We caught up with a large lumber raft this morning, descending from Pittsburg to Cincinnati. The half-dozen men in charge were housed midway in a rude little shanty, and relieved each other at the sweeps--two at bow, and two astern. It is an easy, lounging life, most of the way, with some difficulties in the shallows, and in pa.s.sing beneath the great bridges. They travel night and day, except in the not infrequent wind-storms blowing up stream; and it will take them another week to cover the three hundred miles between this and their destination. Far different fellows, these commonplace raftsmen of to-day, from the "lumber boys" of a half-century or more ago, when the river towns were regularly "painted red" by the men who followed the Ohio by raft or flatboat. Life along sh.o.r.e was then more picturesque than comfortable.

Later, we stopped on the Ohio sh.o.r.e to chat with a group of farmers having a Sunday talk, their seat a drift log, in the shade of a willowed bank. They proved to be market gardeners and fruit-growers--well-to-do men of their cla.s.s, and intelligent in conversation; all of them descendants of the st.u.r.dy New Englanders who settled these parts.

While the others were discussing small fruits with these transplanted Yankees, who proved quite as full of curiosity about us as we concerning them, I went down sh.o.r.e a hundred yards, struggling through the dense fringe of willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting off into the stream. The two rough-bearded, merry-eyed fellows at the sweeps were setting their craft broadside to the stream--that "the current might have more holt of her," the chief explained. They were interested in the kodak, and readily posed as I wished, but wanted to see what had been taken, having the common notion that it is like a tintype camera, with results at once attainable. They offered our party a ride for the rest of the day, if we would row alongside and come aboard, but I thanked them, saying their craft was too slow for our needs; at which they laughed heartily, and "'lowed" we might be traders, too, anxious to get in ahead of them--"but there's plenty o'

room o' th' river, for yew an' we, stranger! Well, good luck to yees!

We'll see yer down below, somewhar, I reckon!"

Just before lunch, we were at Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum (171 miles), a fine stream, here two hundred and fifty yards wide. A storied river, this Muskingum. We first definitely hear of it in 1748, the year the original Ohio Company was formed. Celoron was here the year following, with his little band of French soldiers and Indians, vainly endeavoring to turn English traders out of the Ohio Valley.

Christopher Gist came, some months later; then the trader Croghan, for "Old Wyandot Town," the Indian village at the mouth, was a noted center in Western forest traffic. Moravian missionaries appeared in due time, establis.h.i.+ng on the banks of the Muskingum the ill-fated convert villages of Schonbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem. In 1785, Fort Harmar was reared on the site of Wyandot Town. Lastly, in the early spring of 1788, came, in Ohio river flatboats, that famous body of New England veterans of the Revolution, under Gen. Rufus Putnam, and planted Marietta--"the Plymouth Rock of the West."

We smile at these Ohio pilgrims, for dignifying the hills which girt in the Marietta bottom, with the names of the seven on which Rome is said to be built--for having a Campus Martius and a Sacra Via, and all that, out here among the sycamore stumps and the wild Indians. But a cla.s.sical revival was just then vigorously affecting American thought, and it would have been strange if these st.u.r.dy New Englanders had not felt its influence, fresh as they were from out the shadows of Harvard and Yale, and in the awesome presence of crowds of huge monumental earthworks, whose age, in their day, was believed to far outdate the foundations of the Eternal City itself. They loved learning for learning's sake; and here, in the log-cabins of Marietta, eight hundred miles west of their beloved Boston, among many another good thing they did for posterity, they established the principle of public education at public cost, as a national principle.

They were soldier colonists. Was.h.i.+ngton, out of a full heart, for he dearly loved the West, said of them: "No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community." And when, in 1825, La Fayette had read to him the list of Marietta pioneers,--nearly fifty military officers among them,--he cried: "I know them all! I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave!"

Yet, for a long time, Marietta met with small measure of success.

Miasma, Indian ravages, and the conservative temperament of the people combined to render slow the growth of this Western Plymouth. There were, for a time, extensive s.h.i.+p-building yards here; but that industry gradually declined, with the growth of railway systems. In our day, Marietta, with its ten thousand inhabitants, prospers chiefly as a market town and an educational center, with some manufacturing interests. We were struck to-day, as we tarried there for an hour or two, with the remarkable resemblance it has in public and private architecture, and in general tone, to a typical New England town--say, for example, Burlington, Vt. Omitting its river front, and its Mound Cemetery, Marietta might be set bodily down almost anywhere in Ma.s.sachusetts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, and the chance traveler would see little in the place to remind him of the West. I know of no other town out of New England of which the same might be said.

Below Marietta, the river bottoms are, for miles together, edged with broad stretches of sloping beach, either deep with sand or naturally paved with pebbles--sometimes treeless, but often strewn with clumps of willow and maple and scrub sycamore. The hills, now rounder, less ambitious, and more widely separated, are checkered with fields and forests, and the bottom lands are of more generous breadth. Pleasant islands stud the peaceful stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse chestnut, the pawpaw, the grape, and the willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene is this through which we glide.

It is evident that it would be a scalding day but for the gentle breeze astern; setting sail, we gladly drop our oars, and, with the water rippling at our prow, sweep blithely down the long southern reach to Parkersburg, W. Va., at the mouth of the Little Kanawha (183 miles). In the full glare of the scorching sun, Parkersburg looks harsh and dry. But it is well built, and, as seen from the river, apparently prosperous. The Ohio is here crossed by the once famous million-dollar bridge of the Baltimore & Ohio railway. The wharf is at the junction of the two streams, but chiefly on the sh.o.r.e of the unattractive Little Kanawha, which is spanned by several bridges, and abounds in steamers and houseboats moored to the land. Clark and Jones did not think well of Little Kanawha lands, yet there were several families on the river as early as 1763, and Trent, Croghan, and other Fort Pitt fur-traders had posts here. There were only half-a-dozen houses in 1800, and Parkersburg itself was not laid out until ten years later.

Blennerha.s.sett's Island lies two miles below--a broad, dark ma.s.s of forest, at the head joined by a dam to the West Virginia sh.o.r.e, from which it is separated by a slender channel. Blennerha.s.sett's is some three and a half miles long; of its five hundred acres, four hundred are under cultivation in three separate tenant farms. We landed at the upper end, where Blennerha.s.sett had his wharf, facing the Ohio sh.o.r.e, and found that we were trespa.s.sing upon "The Blennerha.s.sett Pleasure Grounds." A seedy-looking man, who represented himself to be the proprietor, promptly accosted us and levied a "landing fee" of ten cents per head, which included the right to remain over night. A little questioning developed the fact that thirty acres at the head of the island belong to this man, who rents the ground to a market gardener,--together with the comfortable farmhouse which occupies the site of Blennerha.s.sett's mansion,--but reserves to himself the privilege of levying toll on visitors. He declared to me that fifteen thousand people came to the island each summer, generally in large railway and steamboat excursions, which gives him an easily-acquired income sufficient for his needs. It is a pity that so famous a place is not a public park.

The touching story of the Blennerha.s.setts is one of the best known in Western annals. Rich in culture and worldly possessions, but wildly impracticable, Harman Blennerha.s.sett and his beautiful wife came to America in 1798. Buying this lovely island in the Ohio, six hundred miles west of tidewater, they built a large mansion, which they furnished luxuriously, adorning it with fine pictures and statuary.

Here, in the midst of beautiful grounds, while Blennerha.s.sett studied astronomy, chemistry, and galvanism, his brilliant spouse dispensed rare hospitality to their many distinguished guests; for, in those days, it was part of a rich young man's education to take a journey down the Ohio, into "the Western parts," and on returning home to write a book about it.

But there came a serpent to this Eden. Aaron Burr was among their visitors (1805), while upon his journey to New Orleans, where he hoped to set on foot a scheme to seize either Texas or Mexico, and set up a republic with himself at the head. He interested the susceptible Blennerha.s.setts in his plans, the import of which they probably little understood; but the fantastic Englishman had suffered a considerable reduction of fortune, and was anxious to recoup, and Burr's representations were aglow with the promise of such rewards in the golden southwest as Cortes and Coronado sought. Blennerha.s.sett's purse was opened to the enterprise of Burr; large sums were spent in boats and munitions, which were, tradition says, for a time hid in the bayou which, close by our camp, runs deep into the island forest. It has been filled in by the present proprietor, but its bold sh.o.r.e lines, all hung with giant sycamores, are still in evidence.

President Jefferson's proclamation (October, 1806) shattered the plot, and Blennerha.s.sett fled to join Burr at the mouth of the c.u.mberland.

Both were finally arrested (1807), and tried for treason, but acquitted on technical grounds. In the meantime, people from the neighboring country sacked Blennerha.s.sett's house; then came creditors, and with great waste seized his property; the beautiful place was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians, and turned into ign.o.ble uses; later, the mansion itself was burned through the carelessness of negroes--and now, all they can show us are the old well and the n.o.ble trees which once graced the lawn. As for the Blennerha.s.setts themselves, they wandered far and wide, everywhere the victims of misfortune. He died on the Island of Guernsey (1831), a disappointed office-seeker; she, returning to America to seek redress from Congress for the spoliation of her home, pa.s.sed away in New York, before the claim was allowed, and was buried by the Sisters of Charity.

CHAPTER IX.

Poor whites--First library in the West--An hour at Hockingport--A hermit fisher.

Long Bottom, Monday, May 14th.--Pus.h.i.+ng up stream for two miles this morning, the commissary department replenished the day's stores at Parkersburg. Forepaugh's circus was in town, and crowds of rustics were coming in by wagon road, railway trains, and steamers and ferries on both rivers. The streets of the quaint, dingy Southern town were teeming with humanity, mainly negroes and poor whites. Among the latter, flat, pallid faces, either flabby or too lean, were under the swarms of blue, white, and yellow sunbonnets--sad faces, with lack-l.u.s.ter eyes, coa.r.s.e hair of undecided hue, and coa.r.s.er speech. These Audreys of Dixie-land are the product of centuries of ill-treatment on our soil; indented white servants to the early coast colonists were in the main their ancestors; with slave compet.i.tion, the white laborer in the South lost caste until even the negro despised him; and ill-nurture has done the rest. Then, too, in these bottoms, malaria has wrought its work, especially among the underfed; you see it in the yellow skin and nerveless tone of these lanky rustics, who are in town to enjoy the one bright holiday of their weary year.

Across the river, in Ohio, is Belpre (short for Belle Prairie, and now locally p.r.o.nounced Bel'pry), settled by Revolutionary soldiers, on the Marietta grant, in 1789-90. I always think well of Belpre, because here was established the first circulating library in the Northwest.

Old Israel Putnam, he of the wolf-den and Bunker Hill, ama.s.sed many books. His son Israel, on moving to Belpre in 1796, carried a considerable part of the collection with him--no small undertaking this, at a time when goods had to be carted all the way from Connecticut, over rivers and mountains to the Ohio, and then floated down river by flatboat, with a high tariff for every pound of freight.

Young Israel was public-spirited, and, having been at so great cost and trouble to get this library out to the wilderness, desired his fellow-colonists to enjoy it with him. It would have been unfair not to distribute the expense, so a stock company was formed, and shares were sold at ten dollars each. Of the blessings wrought in this rude frontier community by the books which the elder Israel had collected for his Connecticut fireside, there can be no more eloquent testimony than that borne by an old settler, who, in 1802, writes to an Eastern friend: "In order to make the long winter evenings pa.s.s more smoothly, by great exertion I purchased a share in the Belpre library, six miles distant. Many a night have I pa.s.sed (using pine knots instead of candles) reading to my wife while she sat hatcheling, carding or spinning." The a.s.sociation was dissolved in 1815 or 1816, and the books distributed among the shareholders; many of these volumes are still extant in this vicinity, and several are in the college museum at Marietta.

There are few descendants hereabout of the original New England settlers, and they live miles apart on the Ohio sh.o.r.e. We went up to visit one, living opposite Blennerha.s.sett's Island. Notice of our coming had preceded us, and we were warmly welcomed at a substantial farmhouse in the outskirts of Belpre, with every evidence about of abundant prosperity. The maternal great-grandfather of our host for an hour was Rufus Putnam, an ancestor to be proud of. Five acres of gooseberries are grown on the place, and other small-fruits in proportion--all for the Parkersburg market, whence much is s.h.i.+pped north to Cleveland. Our host confessed to a little malaria, even on this upper terrace--or "second bottom," as they style it--but "the land is good, though with many stones--natural conditions, you know, for New Englanders." It was pleasant for a New England man, not long removed from his native soil, to find these people, who are a century away from home, still claiming kins.h.i.+p.

At the Big Hockhocking River (197 miles), on a high, semicircular bottom, is Hockingport, a hamlet with a population of three hundred.

Here, on a still higher bench, a quarter of a mile back from the river, Lord Dunmore built Fort Gower, one of a chain of posts along his march against the Northwest Indians (1774). It was from here that he marched to the Pickaway Plains, on the Scioto (near Circleville, O.), and concluded that treaty of peace to which Chief Logan refused his consent. There are some remains yet left of this palisaded earthwork of a century and a quarter ago, but the greater part has been obliterated by plowing, and a dwelling occupies a portion of the site.

It had been very warm, and we had needed an awning as far down as Hockingport, where we cooled off by lying on the gra.s.s in the shade of the village blacksmith's shop, which is, as well, the ferry-house, with the bell hung between two tall posts at the top of the bank, its rope dangling down for public use. The smith-ferryman came out with his wife--a burly, good-natured couple--and joined us in our lounging, for it is not every day that river travelers put in at this dreamy, far-away port. The wife had camped with her husband, when he was boss of a railway construction gang, and both of them frankly envied us our trip. So did a neighboring storekeeper, a tall, lean, grave young man, clean-shaven, coatless and vestless, with a blue-gla.s.s stud on his collarless white s.h.i.+rt. Apparently there was no danger of customers walking away with his goods, for he left his store-door open to all comers, not once glancing thitherward in the half-hour he sat with us on a stick of timber, in which he pensively carved his name.

Life goes easily in Hockingport. Years ago there was some business up the Big Hocking (short for Big Hockhocking), a stream of a half-dozen rods' width, but now no steamer ventures up--the railroads do it all; as for the Ohio--well, the steamers now and then put off a box or bale for the four shop-keepers, and once in a while a pa.s.senger patronizes the landing. There is still a little country traffic, and formerly a sawmill was in operation here; you see its ruins down there below.

Hockingport is a type of several rustic hamlets we have seen to-day; they are often in pairs, one either side of the river, for companions.h.i.+p's sake.

We are idling, despite the knowledge that on turning every big bend we are getting farther and farther south, and mid-June on the Lower Ohio is apt to be sub-tropical. But the sinking sun gives us a shadowy right bank, and that is most welcome. The current is only spasmodically good. Every night the river falls from three to six inches, and there are long stretches of slack-water. The steamers pick their way carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage--but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells--there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; within those, you may s.h.i.+p water, which is not desirable when there is a cargo. But the boys at the towns sometimes put out in their rude punts into the very vortex of disturbance, being dashed about in the white roar at the base of the ponderous paddle wheels, like a Fiji Islander in his surf-boat. We heard, the other day, of a boatload of daring youngsters being caught by the wheel, their craft smashed into kindling-wood, and they themselves all drowned but one.

The hills, to-day, sometimes break sharply off, leaving an eroded, often vine-festooned palisade some fifty feet in height, at the base of which is a long, tree-clad slope of debris; then, a narrow, level terrace from fifty to a hundred yards in width, which drops suddenly to a rocky beach; this in turn is often lined along the water's edge with irregularly-shaped boulders, from the size of Pilgrim to fifteen or twenty feet in height, and worn smooth with the grinding action of the river. The effect is highly picturesque. We shall have much of this below.

At the foot of one of these palisades lay a shanty-boat, with nets sprawled over the roof to dry, and a live-box anch.o.r.ed hard by.

"h.e.l.lo, the boat!" brought to the window the head of the lone fisherman, who dreamily peered at us as we announced our wish to become his customers. A sort of poor-white Neptune, this tall, lean, lantern-jawed old fellow, with great round, iron-rimmed spectacles over his fishy eyes, his hair and beard in long, snaky locks, and clothing in dirty tatters. As he put out in his skiff to reach the live-box, he continuously spewed tobacco juice about him, and in an undertone growled garrulously, as though used to soliloquize in his hermitage, where he lay at outs with the world. He had been in this spot for two years, he said, and sold fish to the daily Parkersburg steamer--when there were any fish. But, for six months past, he "hadn't made enough to keep him in grub," and had now and then to go up to the city and earn something. For forty years had he followed the apostles' calling on "this yere Ohio," and the fis.h.i.+ng was never so poor as now--yes, sir! hard times had struck his business, just like other folks'. He thought the oil wells were tainting the water, and the fish wouldn't breed--and the iron slag, too, was spoiling the river, and he knew it. He finally produced for us, out of his box, a three-pound fish,--white perch, calico ba.s.s, and catfish formed his stock in trade,--but, before handing it over, demanded the requisite fifteen cents. Evidently he had had dealings with a dishonest world, this hermit fisher, and had learned a thing or two.

Perfect camping places are not to be found every day. There are so many things to think of--a good landing place; good height above the water level, in case of a sudden rise; a dry, shady, level spot for the tent; plenty of wood, and, if possible, a spring; and not too close proximity to a house. Occasionally we meet with what we want, when we want it; but quite as often, ideal camping places, while abundant half the day, are not to be found at five o'clock, our usual hour for homeseeking. The Doctor is our agent for this task, for, being bow oar, he can clamber out most easily. This evening, he ranged both sh.o.r.es for a considerable distance, with ill success, so that we are settled on a narrow Ohio sand-beach, in the midst of a spa.r.s.e willow copse, only two feet above the river. Dinner was had at the very water's edge. After a time, a wind-storm arose and flapped the tent right vigorously, causing us to pin down tightly and weight the sod-cloth; while, amid distant thundering, every preparation was made for a speedy embarkation in the event of flood. The bellow of the frogs all about us, the scream of toads, and the heavy swash of pa.s.sing steamers dangerously near our door, will be a sufficient lullaby to-night.

CHAPTER X.

Cliff-dwellers on Long Bottom--Pomeroy Bend--Letart's Island and Rapids--Game in the early day--Rainy weather--In a "cracker" home.

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

Palisades were frequent to-day. We stopped just below camp, at an especially picturesque Ohio hamlet,--Long Bottom (207 miles),--where the dozen or so cottages are built close against the bald rock.

Clambering over great water-worn boulders, at the river's brink, the Doctor and I made our way up through a dense tangle of willows and poison ivy and grape-vines, emerging upon the country road which pa.s.ses at the foot of this row of modern cliff-dwellings. For the most part, little gardens, with neat palings, run down from the cottages to the road. One sprawling log house, fairly embowered in vines, and overtopped by the palisade rising sheer for thirty feet above its back door, looked in this setting for all the world like an Alpine chalet, lacking only stones on the roof to complete the picture. I took a kodak shot at this, also at a group of tousle-headed children at the door of a decrepit shanty built entirely within a crevice of the rock--their Hibernian mother, with one hand holding an ap.r.o.n over her head, and the other s.h.i.+elding her eyes, shrilly crying to a neighboring cliff-dweller: "Miss McCarthy! Miss McCarthy! There's a feller here, a photergraph'n' all the people in the Bottom! Come, quick!" Then they eagerly pressed around me, Germans and Irish, big and little, women and children mostly, asking for a view of the picture, which I gave all in turn by letting them peep into the ground-gla.s.s "finder"--a pretty picture, they said it was, with the colors all in, and "wonderfully like," though a wee bit small.

Speaking of color, we are daily struck with the brilliant hues in the workaday dresses of women and children seen along the river. Red calico predominates, but blues and yellows, and even greens, are seen, brightly splas.h.i.+ng the somber landscape.

After Long Bottom, we enter upon the south-sweeping Pomeroy Bend of the Ohio, commencing at Murraysville (208 miles) and ending at Pomeroy (247 miles). It is of itself a series of smaller bends, and, as we twist about upon our course, the wind strikes us successively on all quarters; sometimes giving the Doctor a chance to try his sail, which he raises on the slightest provocation,--but at all times agreeably ruffling the surface that would otherwise reflect the glowing sun like a mirror.

The sloping margins of the rich bottoms are now often cultivated almost to the very edge of the stream, with a line of willow trees left as a protecting fringe. Farmers doing this take a gambling risk of a summer rise. Where the margins have been left untouched by the plow, there is a dense ma.s.s of vegetation--sycamores, big of girth and towering to a hundred feet or more, abound on every hand; the willows are phenomenally-rapid growers; and in all available s.p.a.ce is the rank, thick-standing growth of an annual locally styled "horse-weed,"

which rears a cane-like stalk full eighteen or twenty feet high--it has now attained but four or five feet, but the dry stalks of last year's growth are everywhere about, showing what a formidable barrier to landing these giant weeds must be in midsummer.

We chose for a camping place Letart's Island (232 miles), on the West Virginia side, not far below Milwood. From the head, where our tent is pitched on a sandy knoll thick-grown to willows, a long gravel spit runs far over toward the Ohio sh.o.r.e. The West Virginia channel is narrow, slow and shallow; that between us and Ohio has been lessened by the island to half its usual width, and the current sweeps by at a six-mile gait, in which the Doctor and I found it difficult to keep our footing while having our customary evening dip. Our island is two long, forested humps of sand, connected by a stretch of gravel beach, giving every evidence of being submerged in times of flood; everywhere are chaotic heaps of driftwood, many cords in extent; derelict trees are lodged in the tops of the highest willows and maples--ghostly giants sprawling in the moonlight; there is an abandon of vegetable debris, layer after layer laid down in sandy coverlids. Wild gra.s.ses, which flourish on all these flooded lands, here attain enormous size.

Dispensing with our cots for the nonce, we have spread our blankets over heaps of dried gra.s.s pulled from the monster tufts of last year's growth. The Ohio is capable of raising giant floods; it is still falling with us, but there are signs at hand, beyond the slight sprinkle which cooled the air for us at bedtime, of rainy weather after the long drouth. When the feeders in the Alleghanies begin to swell, we shall perch high o' nights.

Near Ches.h.i.+re, O., Wednesday, May 16th.--The fine current at the island gave us a n.o.ble start this morning. The river soon widens, but Letart's Falls, a mile or two below, continue the movement, and we went fairly spinning on our way. These so-called falls, rapids rather, long possessed the imagination of early travelers. Some of the chroniclers have, while describing them, indulged in flights of fancy.[A] They are of slight consequence, however, even at this low stage of water, save to the careless canoeist who has had no experience in rapid water, well-strewn with sunken boulders. The scenery of the locality is wild, and somewhat impressive. The Ohio bank is steep and rugged, abounding in narrow little terraces of red clay, deeply gullied, and dotted with rough, mean shanties. It all had a forbidding aspect, when viewed in the blinding sun; but before we had pa.s.sed, an intervening cloud cast a deep shadow over the scene, and, softening the effect, made the picture more pleasing.

Croghan was at Letart (1765), on one of his land-viewing trips for the Ohio Company, and tells us that he saw a "vast migrating herd" of buffalo cross the river here. In the beginning of colonization in this valley, buffalo and elk were to be seen in herds of astonis.h.i.+ng size; traces of their well-beaten paths through the hills, and toward the salt licks of Kentucky and Illinois, were observable until within recent years. Gordon, an early traveler down the Ohio (1766), speaks of "great herds of buffalo, we observed on the beaches of the river and islands into which they come for air, and coolness in the heat of the day;" he commenced his raids on them a hundred miles below Pittsburg. Hutchins (1778) says, "the whole country abounds in Bears, Elks, Buffaloe, Deer, Turkies, &c."[B] Bears, panthers, wolves, eagles, and wild turkeys were indeed very plenty at first, but soon became extinct. The theory is advanced by Dr. Doddridge, in his _Notes on Virginia_, that hunters' dogs introduced hydrophobia among the wolves, and this ridded the country of them sooner than they would naturally have gone; but they were still so numerous in 1817, that the traveler Palmer heard them nightly, "barking on both banks."

Venomous serpents were also numerous in pioneer days, and stayed longer. The story is told of a tumulus up toward Moundsville, that abounded in snakes, particularly rattlers. The settlers thought to dig them out, but they came to such a ma.s.s of human bones that that plan was abandoned. Then they inst.i.tuted a blockade, by erecting a tight-board fence around the mound, and, thus entrapping the reptiles, extirpated the colony in a few days.