Afloat on the Ohio Part 6

CHAPTER XII.

In a fog--The Big Sandy--Rainy weather--Operatic gypsies--An ancient tavern.

Ironton, O., Sat.u.r.day, May 19th.--When we turned in, last night, it was refres.h.i.+ngly cool. Heavy clouds were scurrying across the face of the moon. By midnight, a copious rain was falling, wind-gusts were flapping our roof, and a sudden drop in temperature rendered sadly inadequate all the clothing we could muster into service. We slept late, in consequence, and, after rigging a wind-break with the rubber blankets, during breakfast huddled around the stove which had been brought in to replace Pilgrim under the fly. When, at half-past nine, we pushed off, our houseboat neighbors thrust their heads from the window and waved us farewell.

A dense fog hung like a cloud over land and river. There was a stiff north-east wind, which we avoided by seeking the Ohio sh.o.r.e, where the high hills formed a break; there too, the current was swift, and carried us down right merrily. Shattered by the wind, great banks of fog rolled up stream, sometimes enveloping us so as to narrow our view to a radius of a dozen rods,--again, through the rifts, giving us momentary glimpses on the right, of rich green hills, towering dark and steep above us, iridescent with browns, and grays, and many shades of green; of whitewashed cabins, single or in groups, standing out with startling distinctness from sombre backgrounds; of houseboats, many-hued, moored to willowed banks or bolstered high upon shaly beaches; of the opposite bottom, with its corrugated cliff of clay; and, now and then, a slowly-puffing steamboat cautiously feeling its way through the chilling gloom--a monster to be avoided by little Pilgrim and her crew, for the possibility of being run down in a fog is not pleasant to contemplate. On board one of these steamers was a sorry company--apparently a Sunday-school excursion. Children in gala dress huddled in swarms on the lee of the great smoke-stacks, and in imagination we heard their teeth chatter as they glided by us and in another moment were engulfed in the mist.

We catch sight for a moment, through a cloud creva.s.se, of Ceredo, the last town in West Virginia--a small saw-milling community stuck upon the edge of the clay cliff, with the broad level bottom stretching out behind like a prairie. A giant railway bridge here spans the Ohio--a weird, impressive thing, as we sweep under it in the swirling current, and crane our necks to see the great stone piers lose themselves in the cloud. But the Big Sandy River (315 miles), which divides West Virginia and Kentucky, was wholly lost to view. In an opening a few moments later, however, we had a glimpse of the dark line of her valley, below which the hills again descend to the Ohio's bank.

Catlettsburg, the first Kentucky town, is at the junction, and extends along the foot of the ridge for a mile or two, apparently not over two blocks wide, with a few outlying shanties on the shoulders of the uplands. Was.h.i.+ngton was surveying here, on the Big Sandy, in 1770, and entered for one John Fry 2,084 acres round the site of Louisa, a dozen miles up the river; this was the first survey made in Kentucky--but a few months later than Boone's first advent as a hunter on the "dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground," and five years before the first permanent settlement in the State. Was.h.i.+ngton deserves to be remembered as a Kentucky pioneer.

We have not only steamers to avoid,--they appear to be unusually numerous about here,--but snags as well. With care, the whereabouts of a steamer can be distinguished as it steals upon us, from the superior whiteness of its column of "exhaust," penetrating the bank of dark gray fog; and occasionally the echoes are awakened by the burly roar of its whistle, which, in times like this, acts as a fog-horn. But the snag is an insidious enemy, not revealing itself until we are within a rod or two, and then there is a quick cry of warning from the stern sheets--"Hard a-port!" or "Starboard, quick!" and only a strong side-pull, aided by W----'s paddle, sends us free from the jagged, branching ma.s.s which might readily have swamped poor Pilgrim had she taken it at full tilt.

At Ashland, Ky. (320 miles), we stopped for supplies. There are six thousand inhabitants here, with some good buildings and a fine, broad, stone wharf, but it is rather a dingy place. The steamer "Bonanza" had just landed. On the double row of flaggings leading up to the summit of the bank, were two ant-like processions of Kentucky folk--one, leisurely climbing townward with their bags and bundles, the other hurrying down with theirs to the boat, which was ringing its bell, blowing off steam, and in other ways creating an uproar which seemed to turn the heads of the negro roustabouts and draymen, who bustled around with a great chatter and much false motion. The railway may be doing the bulk of the business, but it does it unostentatiously; the steamboat makes far more disturbance in the world, and is a finer spectacle. Dozens of boys are lounging at the wharf foot, watching the lively scene with fascinated eyes, probably every one of them stoutly possessed of an ambition akin to that of my young friend in the Ches.h.i.+re Bottom.

A rain-storm broke the fog--a cold, raw, miserable rain. No clothing we could don appeared to suffice against the chill; and so at last we pitched camp upon the Ohio sh.o.r.e, three miles above the Ironton wharf (325 miles). It is a muddy, dreary nest up here, among the dripping willows. Just behind us on the slope, is the inclined track of the Norfolk & Western railway-transfer, down which trains are slid to a huge slip, and thence ferried over the river into Kentucky; above that, on a narrow terrace, is an ordinary railway line; and still higher, up a slippery clay bank, lies the cottage-strewn bottom which stretches on into Ironton (13,000 inhabitants).

We were a sorry-looking party, at lunch this noon, hovering over the smoking stove which was set in the tent door, with a wind-screen in front, and moist bedding hung all about in the vain hope of drying it in the feeble heat. And sorrier still, through the long afternoon, as, each encased in a sleeping-bag, we sat upon our cots circling around the stove, W---- reading to us between chattering teeth from Barrie's _When a Man's Single_. 'Tis good Scottish weather we're having; but somehow our thoughts could not rest on Thrums, and we were, for the nonce, a wee bit miserable.

Dinner degenerated into a smoky bite, and then at dusk there was a council of war. The air hangs thick with moisture, our possessions are in various stages from damp to sopping wet, and efforts at drying over the little stove are futile under such conditions. It was demonstrated that there was not bed-clothing enough, in such an emergency as this; indeed, an inspection of that which was merely damp, revealed the fact that but one person could be made comfortable to-night. Our bachelor Doctor volunteered to be that one. So we bade him G.o.d-speed, and with toilet bag in hand I led my little family up a tortuous path, so slippery in the rain that we were obliged in our muddy climb to cling to gra.s.s-clumps and bushes. And thus, wet and bedraggled, did we sally forth upon the Ironton Bottom, seeking shelter for the night.

Fortunately we had not far to seek. A kindly family took us in, despite our gruesome aspect and our unlikely story--for what manner of folk are we, that go trapesing about in a skiff, in such weather as this, coming from n.o.body knows where and camping o' nights in the muddy river bottoms? Instead of sending us on, in the drenching rain, to a hotel, three miles down the road, or offering us a ticket on the a.s.sociated Charities, these blessed people open their hearts and their beds to us, without question, and what more can weary pilgrims pray for?

Sciotoville, O., Sunday, May 20th.--After breakfast, and settling our modest score, we rejoined the Doctor, and at ten o'clock pulled out again; being bidden good-bye at the landing, by the children of our hostess, who had sent us by them a bottle of fresh milk as a parting gift.

It had rained almost continuously, throughout the night. To-day we have a dark gray sky, with fickle winds. A charming color study, all along our path; the reds and grays and yellows of the high clay-banks which edge the reciprocating bottoms, the browns and yellows of hillside fields, the deep greens of forest verdure, the vivid white of bankside cabins, and, in the background of each new vista, bold headlands veiled in blue. W---- and the Boy are in the stern sheets, wrapped in blankets, for there is a smart chill in the air, and we at the oars pull lively for warmth. In our twisting course, sometimes we have a favoring breeze, and the Doctor rears the sail; but it is a brief delight, for the next turn brings the wind in our teeth, and we set to the blades with renewed energy. In the main, we make good time.

The sugar-loaf hills, with their castellated escarpments, go marching by with stately sweep.

Greenup Court House (334 miles) is a bright little Kentucky county-seat, well-built at the feet of thickly-forested uplands. At the lower end of the village, the Little Sandy enters through a wooded dale, which near the mouth opens into a broad meadow. Not many miles below, is a high sloping beach, picturesquely bestrewn with gigantic boulders which have in ages past rolled down from the hill-tops above.

Here, among the rocks, we again set up a rude screen from the still piercing wind; and, each wrapped in a gay blanket, lunch as operatic gypsies might, in a romantic glen, enjoying mightily our steaming chocolate, and the warmth of our friendly stove--for dessert, taking a merry scamper for flowers, over the ragged ascent from whence the boulders came. Everywhere about is the trumpet creeper, but not yet in bloom. The Indian turnip is in blossom here, and so the smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy sh.o.r.e, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the familiar moth mullein.

With the temperature falling rapidly, and a drizzling rain taking the starch out of our enthusiasm, we early sought a camping ground. For miles along here, springs ooze from the base of the high clay bank walling in the wide and rocky Ohio beach, and dry spots are few and far between. We found one, however, a half mile above Little Scioto River (346 miles),[A] with drift-wood enough to furnish us for years, and the beach thick-strewn with fossils of a considerable variety of small bivalves, which latter greatly delighted the Doctor and the Boy, who have brought enough specimens to the tent door to stock a college museum.

Dinner over, the crew hauled Pilgrim under cover, and within prepared for her sailing-master a cosy bed, with the entire s.h.i.+p's stock of sleeping-bags and blankets. W----, the Boy, and I then started off to find quarters in Sciotoville (1,000 inhabitants), which lies just below the river's mouth, here a dozen rods wide. Scrambling up the slimy bank, through a maze of thorn trees, brambles, and sycamore scrubs, we gained the fertile bottom above, all luscious with tall gra.s.ses bespangled with wild red roses and the showy pentstemon. The country road leading into the village is some distance inland, but at last we found it just beyond a patch of Indian corn waist high, and followed it, through a covered bridge, and down to a little hotel at the lower end of town.

A quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned house, the Sciotoville tavern, with an inner gallery looking out into a small garden of peaches, apples, pears, plums, and grapes--a famous grape country this, by the way. In our room, opening from the gallery, is an antique high-post bedstead; everywhere about are similar relics of an early day. In keeping with the air of serene old age, which pervades the hostelry, is the white-haired landlady herself. In well-starched ap.r.o.n, white cap, and gold-rimmed gla.s.ses, she benignly sits rocking by the office stove, her feet on the fender, reading Wallace's _Prince of India_; and looking, for all the world, as if she had just stepped out of some old portrait of--well, of a tavern-keeping Martha Was.h.i.+ngton.

[Footnote A: Two miles up the Little Scioto, Pine Creek enters.

Perhaps a mile and a half up this creek was, in 1771, a Mingo town called Horse Head Bottom, which cuts some figure in border history as a nest of Indian marauders.]

CHAPTER XIII.

The Scioto, and the Shawanese--A night at Rome--Limestone--Keels, flats, and boatmen of the olden time.

Rome, O., Monday, May 21st.--At intervals through the night, rain fell, and the temperature was but 46 at sunrise. However, by the time we were afloat, the sun was fitfully gleaming through ma.s.ses of gray cloud, for a time giving promise of a warmer day. Dark shadows rested on the romantic ravines, and on the deep hollows of the hills; but elsewhere over this gentle landscape of wooded amphitheatres, broad green meadows, rocky escarpments, and many-colored fields, light and shade gayly chased each other. Never were the vistas of the widening river more beautiful than to-day.

There are saw-mill and fire-brick industries in the little towns, which would be shabby enough in the full glare of day. But they are all glorified in this changing light, which brings out the rich yellows and reds in sharp relief against the gloomy background of the hills, and mellows into loveliness the soft grays of unpainted wood.

At the mouth of the Scioto (354 miles), is Portsmouth, O. (15,000 inhabitants), a well-built, substantial town, with good shops. It lies on a hill-backed terrace some forty feet above the level of the neighboring bottoms, which give evidence of being victims of the high floods periodically covering the low lands about the junction of the rivers. Just across the Scioto is Alexandria, and on the Kentucky side of the Ohio can be seen the white hamlet of Springville, at the feet of the dentated hills which here closely approach the river.

The country about the mouth of the Scioto has long figured in Western annals. Being a favorite rendezvous for the Shawanese, it naturally became a resort for French and English fur-traders. The princ.i.p.al part of the first Shawanese village--Shannoah Town, in the old journals--was below the Scioto's mouth, on the site of Alexandria; it was the chief town of this considerable tribe, and here Gist was warned back, when in March, 1751, he ventured thus far while inspecting lands for the Ohio Company. Two years later, there was a great--perhaps an unprecedented--flood in the Ohio, the water rising fifty feet above the ordinary level, and destroying the larger part of the Shawanese village. Some of the Indians moved to the Little Miami, and others up the Scioto, where they built, successively, Old and New Chillicothe; but the majority remained, and rebuilt their town on the higher land north of the Scioto, where Portsmouth now stands. An outlying band had had, from before Gist's day, a small town across the Ohio, the site of Springville; and it was here that George Croghan had his stone trading house, which was doubtless, after the manner of the times, a frontier fortress. In the French and Indian war (1758), the Shawanese, tiring of continual conflict, withdrew from their Ohio River settlements to Old (or Upper) Chillicothe, and thus closed the once important fur-trade at the mouth of the Scioto. It was while the Indian town at Portsmouth was still new (1755), that a party of Shawanese brought here a Mrs. Mary Inglis, whom they had captured while upon a scalping foray into Southwestern Virginia. The story of the remarkable escape of this woman, at Big Bone Lick, of her long and terrible flight through the wilderness along the southern bank of the Ohio and up the Great Kanawha Valley, and her final return to home and kindred, who viewed her as one delivered from the grave, is one of the most thrilling in Western history.[A]

Although the Shawanese had removed from their villages on the Ohio, they still lived in new towns in the north, within easy striking distance of the great river; and, until the close of the eighteenth century, were a continual source of alarm to those whose business led them to follow this otherwise inviting highway to the continental interior. Flatboats bearing traders, immigrants, and travelers were frequently waylaid by the savages, who exhausted a fertile ingenuity in luring their victims to an ambuscade ash.o.r.e; and, when not successful in this, would in narrow channels, or when the current swept the craft near land, subject the voyagers to a fierce fusilade of bullets, against which even stout plank barricades proved of small avail.

Vanceburgh, Ky. (375 miles), is a little town at the bottom of a pretty amphitheatre of hills. There was a floating photographer there, as we pa.s.sed, with a gang-plank run out to the sh.o.r.e, and framed specimens of his work hung along the town side of his ample barge.

Men with teams were getting wagon-loads of sand from the beach, for building purposes. And, a mile or two down, a floating saw and planing-mill--the "Clipper," which we had seen before, up river--was busied upon logs which were being rolled down the beach from the bank above. There are several such mills upon the river, all seemingly occupied with "tramp work," for there is a deal of logging carried on, in a small and careful way, by farmers living on these wooded hills.

Vanceburgh was for the time bathed in sunlight; but, as we continued on our way, a heavy rain-cloud came creeping up over the dark Ohio hills, and, descending, cut off our view, at last l.u.s.tily pelting us as we sat encased in rubber. We had been in our ponchos most of the day, as much for warmth as for shelter; for there was an all-pervading chill, which the fickle sun, breaking its early promise, had failed to dissipate. Thus, amid showers alternating with sunbeams, we proceeded unto Rome (381 miles). An Ohio village, this Rome, and so fallen from its once proud estate that its postoffice no longer bears the name--it is simply "Stout's," if, in these degenerate days, you would send a letter hither.

It was smartly raining, when we put in on the stony beach above Rome.

The tent went up in a hurry, and under it the cargo; but by the time all was housed the sun gushed out again, and, stretching a line, we soon had our bedding hung to dry. It is a charming situation; in this melting atmosphere, we have perhaps the most striking effects of cloud, hill, bottom, islands, and glancing river, which have yet been vouchsafed us.

The Romans, like most rural folk along the river below Wheeling, chiefly drink cistern water. Earlier in our pilgrimage, we stoutly declined to patronize these rain-water reservoirs, and I would daily go far afield in search of a well; but lately, necessity has driven us to accept the cistern, and often we find it even preferable to the well, on those rare occasions when the latter can be found at villages or farm-houses. But there are cisterns and cisterns--foul holes like that at Rosebud, others that are neatness itself, with all manner of grades between. As for river water, ever yellow with clay, and thick as to motes, much of it is used in the country parts. This morning, a bevy of negroes came down the bank from a Kentucky field; and each in turn, creeping out on a drift log,--for the ground is usually muddy a few feet up from the water's edge,--lay flat on his stomach and drank greedily from the roily mess.

At dusk, there was again a damp chill, and for the third time we left the Doctor to keep bachelor's hall upon the beach. It was raining smartly by the time the tavern was reached, nearly a mile down the bank. Our advent caused a rare scurrying to and fro, for two commercial "drummers," who were to depart by the early morning boat, occupied the "reg'lar spar' room," the landlady informed us, and a bit of a cubby-hole off the back stairs had to be arranged for us. Guests are rarities, at the hostelry in Rome.

Near Ripley, O., Tuesday, May 22nd.--There was an inch of snow last night, on the hills about, and a morning Cincinnati paper records a heavy fall in the Pennsylvania mountains. The storm is general, and the river rose two feet over night. When we set off, in mid-morning, it was raining heavily; but in less than an hour the clouds broke, and the rest of the day has been an alternation of chilling showers and bursts of warm suns.h.i.+ne, with the same succession, of alluring vistas, over which play broad bands of changing light and shade, and overhead the storm clouds torn and tossed in the upper currents.

Our landlord at Rome a.s.serted at breakfast that Kentucky was fifty years behind the Ohio side, in improvements of every sort. Thus far, we have not ourselves noticed differences of that degree. Doubtless before the late civil war,--all the ante-bellum travelers agree in this,--when the blight of slavery was resting on Virginia and Kentucky, the south sh.o.r.e of the Ohio was as another country; but to-day, so far as we can ascertain from a surface view, the little villages on either side are equally dingy and woe-begone, and large Southern towns like Wheeling, Parkersburg, Point Pleasant, and Maysville are very nearly an offset to Steubenville, Marietta, Pomeroy, Ironton, and Portsmouth. North-sh.o.r.e towns of wealth and prominence are more numerous than on the Dixie bank, and are as a rule larger and somewhat better kept, with the negro element less conspicuous; but to say that the difference is anywhere near as marked as the landlord averred, or as my own previous reading on the subject led me to expect, is grossly to exaggerate.

After leaving Manchester, O. (394 miles), with a beautiful island at its door, there are spasmodic evidences of the nearness of a great city market. A large proportion of the hills are completely denuded of their timber, and patched with rectangular fields of green, brown, and yellow; upon the bottoms there are frequent truck farms; now and then are stone quarries upon the banks, with capacious barges moored in front; and upon one or two rocky ledges were stone-crushers, getting out material for concrete pavements. When we ask the bargemen, in pa.s.sing, whither their loads are destined, the invariable reply is, "The city"--meaning Cincinnati, still seventy miles away.

Limestone Creek (405 miles) occupies a large s.p.a.ce in Western story, for so insignificant a stream. It is now not over a rod in width, and at no season can it be over two or three. One finds it with difficulty along the mill-strewn sh.o.r.e of Maysville, Ky., the modern outgrowth of the Limestone village of pioneer days. Limestone, settled four years before Marietta or Cincinnati, was long Kentucky's chief port of entry on the Ohio; immigrants to the new state, who came down the Ohio, almost invariably booked for this point, thence taking stage to Lexington, and travelers in the early day seldom pa.s.sed it by unvisited. But years before there was any settlement here, the valley of Limestone Creek, which comes gently down from low-lying hills, was regarded as a convenient doorway into Kentucky. When (1776) George Rogers Clark was coming down the river from Pittsburg, with powder given by Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, for the defence of Kentucky settlers from British-incited savages, he was chased by the latter, and, putting into this creek, hastily buried the precious cargo on its banks. From here it was cautiously taken overland to the little forts, by relays of pioneers, through a gauntlet of murderous fire.

About twenty-five miles from Limestone, too, was another attraction of the early time,--the great Blue Lick sulphur spring; here, in a valley surrounded by wooded hills, formerly congregated great herds of buffalo and deer, which licked the salty earth, and hunters soon learned that this was a royal ground for game. The Battle of the Blue Lick (1782) will ever be famous in the annals of Kentucky.

The Ohio was a mighty waterway into the continental interior, in the olden days of Limestone. Its only compeer was the so-called "Wilderness Road," overland through c.u.mberland Gap--the successor of "Boone's trail," just as Braddock's Road was the outgrowth of "Nemacolin's path." Until several years after the Revolutionary War, the country north of the Ohio was still Indian land, and settlement was restricted to the region south of the river; so that practically all West-going roads from the coast colonies centered either on Fort Pitt or Redstone, or on c.u.mberland Gap. On the out-going trip, the Wilderness Road was the more toilsome of the two, but it was safer, for the Ohio's banks were beset with thieving and often murdering savages. In returning east, many who had descended the river preferred going overland through the Gap, to painfully pulling up stream through the shallows, with the danger of Indians many times greater than when gliding down the deep current. The distance over the two routes from Philadelphia, was nearly equal, when the windings of the river were taken into account; but the Carolinians and the Georgians found Boone's Wilderness Road the shorter of the two, in their migrations to the promised land of "Ol' Kaintuck." And we should not overlook the fact, that of much importance was still a third route, up the James and down the Great Kanawha; a route whose advantage to Virginia, Was.h.i.+ngton early saw, and tried in vain to have improved by a ca.n.a.l connecting the two rivers.[B]

Even before the opening of the Revolution, the Ohio was the path of a considerable emigration. We have seen Was.h.i.+ngton going down to the Great Kanawha with his surveying party, in 1770, and finding that settlers were hurrying into the country for a hundred miles below Fort Pitt. By the close of the Revolution, the Ohio was a familiar stream.

Pittsburg, from a small trading hamlet and fording-place, had grown by 1785 to have a thousand inhabitants, chiefly supported by boat-building and the Kentucky carrying trade; and boat-yards were common up both the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny, for a distance of sixty miles. Nevertheless, it was not until 1792 that there were regular conveniences for carrying pa.s.sengers and freight down the Ohio; the emigrant or trader, on arrival at Pittsburg or Redstone, had generally to wait until he could either charter a boat or have one built for him, although sometimes he found a chance "pa.s.senger flat"

going down.[C] This difficulty in securing river transportation was one of the reasons why the majority chose the Wilderness Road.

"The first thing that strikes a stranger from the Atlantic," says Flint (1814), "is the singular, whimsical, and amusing spectacle of the varieties of water-craft, of all shapes and structures." These, Flint, who knew the river well, separates into seven cla.s.ses: (1) "Stately barges," the size of an Atlantic schooner, with "a raised and outlandish-looking deck;" one of these required a crew of twenty-five to work it up stream. (2) Keel-boats--long, slender, and graceful in form, carrying from fifteen to thirty tons, easily propelled over the shallows, and much used in low water, and in hunting trips to Missouri, Arkansas, and the Red River country. (3) Kentucky flats (or "broad-horns"), "a species of ark, very nearly resembling a New England pig-stye;" these were from forty to a hundred feet in length, fifteen feet in beam, and carried from twenty to seventy tons. Some of these flats were not unlike the house-boats of to-day. "It is no uncommon spectacle to see a large family, old and young, servants, cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, fowls, and animals of all kinds," all embarked on one such bottom. (4) Covered "sleds," ferry-flats, or Alleghany skiffs, carrying from eight to twelve tons. (5) Pirogues, of from two to four tons burthen, "sometimes hollowed from one big tree, or the trunks of two trees united, and a plank rim fitted to the upper part." (6) Common skiffs and dug-outs. (7) "Monstrous anomalies," not cla.s.sifiable, and often whimsical in design. To these might be added the "floating shops or stores, with a small flag out to indicate their character," so frequently seen by Palmer (1817), and thriftily surviving unto this day, minus the flag. And Hall (1828) speaks of a flat-bottomed row-boat, "twelve feet long, with high sides and roof,"

carrying an aged couple down the river, they cared not where, so long as they could find a comfortable home in the West, for their declining and now childless years.

The first four cla.s.ses here enumerated, were allowed to drift down stream with the current, being steered by long sweeps hung on pivots.

The average speed was about three miles an hour, but the distances made were considerable, from the fact that in the earliest days they were, from fear of Indians, usually kept on the move through day and night,--the crew taking turns at the sweeps, that the craft might not be hung up on sh.o.r.e or entangled in the numerous snags and sawyers. In going up stream, the sweeps served as oars, and in the shallows long pus.h.i.+ng-poles were used.

As for the boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a cla.s.s unto themselves--"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coa.r.s.e drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally stopped over night in the settlements, and the arrival of a squadron was certain to be followed by a disturbance akin to those so familiar a few years ago in our Southwest, when the cowboys would undertake to "paint a town red." The boatmen were reckless of life, limb, and reputation, and were often more numerous than those of the villagers who cared to enforce the laws; while there was always present an element which abetted and throve on the vice of the river-men. The result was that mischief, debauchery, and outrage ran riot, and in the inevitable fights the citizens were generally beaten.