<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
<h4>Life ashore and afloat—Marietta, "the
Plymouth Rock of the West"—The
Little Kanawha—The story of Blennerhassett's
Island.</h4>
<p><span class="smcap">Blennerhassett's Island</span>, 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.</p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page88" id="page88"></SPAN></span>
<p>The steamboat traffic is improving as we
get lower down. Last evening, between landing
and bedtime, a half dozen passed us, up
and down, breathing heavily as dragons might,
and leaving behind them foamy wakes which
loudly broke upon the shore. Before morning,
I was at intervals awakened by as many
more. A striking spectacle, the passage 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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page89" id="page89"></SPAN></span>
life, most of the way, with some difficulties in
the shallows, and in passing 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 shore
was then more picturesque than comfortable.</p>
<p>Later, we stopped on the Ohio shore 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
class, and intelligent in conversation; all of
them descendants of the sturdy New Englanders
who settled these parts.</p>
<p>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 shore a hundred
yards, struggling through the dense fringe of
willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page90" id="page90"></SPAN></span>
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!"</p>
<p>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. Céloron
was here the year following, with his little
band of French soldiers and Indians, vainly
endeavoring to turn English traders out of the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page91" id="page91"></SPAN></span>
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, establishing on the banks of the Muskingum
the ill-fated convert villages of Schönbrunn,
Gnadenhütten, 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."</p>
<p>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 classical revival was just then
vigorously affecting American thought, and it
would have been strange if these sturdy 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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page92" id="page92"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>They were soldier colonists. Washington,
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!"</p>
<p>Yet, for a long time, Marietta met with
small measure of success. Miasma, Indian
ravages, and the conservative temperament of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page93" id="page93"></SPAN></span>
the people combined to render slow the
growth of this Western Plymouth. There
were, for a time, extensive ship-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 Massachusetts,
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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page94" id="page94"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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 shore 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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page95" id="page95"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>Blennerhassett's Island lies two miles below—a
broad, dark mass of forest, at the head
joined by a dam to the West Virginia shore,
from which it is separated by a slender channel.
Blennerhassett'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 Blennerhassett had his wharf, facing the
Ohio shore, and found that we were trespassing
upon "The Blennerhassett 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 Blennerhassett's mansion,—but
reserves to himself the privilege of levying toll
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page96" id="page96"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>The touching story of the Blennerhassetts
is one of the best known in Western annals.
Rich in culture and worldly possessions, but
wildly impracticable, Harman Blennerhassett
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 Blennerhassett 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.</p>
<p>But there came a serpent to this Eden.
Aaron Burr was among their visitors (1805),
while upon his journey to New Orleans, where
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page97" id="page97"></SPAN></span>
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 Blennerhassetts 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. Blennerhassett'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 shore lines, all
hung with giant sycamores, are still in evidence.</p>
<p>President Jefferson's proclamation (October,
1806) shattered the plot, and Blennerhassett
fled to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland.
Both were finally arrested (1807), and
tried for treason, but acquitted on technical
grounds. In the meantime, people from the
neighboring country sacked Blennerhassett's
house; then came creditors, and with great
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page98" id="page98"></SPAN></span>
waste seized his property; the beautiful place
was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians,
and turned into ignoble 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 noble trees which once
graced the lawn. As for the Blennerhassetts
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, passed away in New York, before the
claim was allowed, and was buried by the Sisters
of Charity.</p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page99" id="page99"></SPAN></span>
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