Afloat on the Ohio Part 11

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 a.s.sertion 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 pa.s.sing beneath the railway bridge at Henderson, thunder sounded, and the western sky suddenly blackened.

Pulling rapidly in to the town sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sociated 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 cus.h.i.+ons.

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 sh.o.r.e 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 cla.s.sic 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 pus.h.i.+ng us swiftly on. In seeking the lee sh.o.r.e, 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 brus.h.i.+ng the fringe of willows and sycamores and maples on low-lying sh.o.r.es. 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 gra.s.ses 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 gla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.s, 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 sh.o.r.e--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-rus.h.i.+ng body of clear, green water, which at first boldly pushes over to the heavily-willowed Kentucky sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s, 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 b.u.t.ter and eggs from the farmers, in exchange for his varied wares, and sells them at a goodly profit to pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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-t.i.tles in Indiana and Illinois.

We are in camp to-night upon the Illinois sh.o.r.e, 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 gra.s.ses, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt in these parts. There were five men upon a side, all carrying guns; as we pa.s.sed, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 sh.o.r.eman'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 cla.s.s of aspiring travelers who defile n.o.ble monuments with their worthless names."--Irving, in _The Alhambra_.]

CHAPTER XXI.

The c.u.mberland and the Tennessee--Stately Solitudes--Old Fort Ma.s.sac--Dead towns in Egypt--The last camp--Cairo.

Opposite Metropolis, Ill., Sat.u.r.day, June 9th.--As we were dressing this morning, at half-past five, the echoes were again awakened by the vociferous negro on the Kentucky sh.o.r.e, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r, 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, n.i.g.g.ah, ober dere! whar you git dat mule?"

"Who you holl'rin' at, you brack island n.i.g.g.ah?" was the quick reply.

"You lan' n.i.g.g.ah, you tink you smart!"