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Afloat on the Ohio

<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2> <h4>Cliff-dwellers on Long Bottom—Pomeroy Bend—Letart's Island and Rapids—Game in the early day—Rainy weather—In a "cracker" home.</h4> 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 passes 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 apron over her head, and the other shielding 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-glass "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 splashing 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 mass 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 space 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 shore. 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 grasses, 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 grass 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. <hr /> Near Cheshire, O., Wednesday, May 16th.—The fine current at the island gave us a noble 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 passed, 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 astonishing 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 mass of human bones that that plan was abandoned. Then they instituted a blockade, by erecting a tight-board fence around the mound, and, thus entrapping the reptiles, extirpated the colony in a few days. Paroquets were once abundant west of the Alleghanies, up to the southern shore of the Great Lakes, and great flocks haunted the salt springs; but to-day they may be found only in the middle Southern states. There were, in a state of nature, no crows, blackbirds, or song-birds in this valley; they followed in the wake of the colonist. The honey bee came with the white man,—or rather, just preceded him. Rats followed the first settlers, then opossums, and fox squirrels still later. It is thought, too, that the sand-hill and whooping cranes, and the great blue herons which we daily see in their stately flight, are birds of these later days, when the neighborhood of man has frightened away the enemies which once kept them from thriving in the valley. Turkey buzzards appear to remain alone of the ancient birds; the earliest travelers note their presence in great flocks, and to-day there are few vistas open to us, without from one to dozens of them wheeling about in mid-air, seeking what they may devour. Public opinion in the valley is opposed to the wanton killing of these scavengers, so useful in a climate as warm as this. Three miles below Letart's Rapids, is the motley settlement of Antiquity, O., a long row of cabins and cottages nestled at the base of a high, vine-clad palisade, similar to that which yesterday we visited at Long Bottom. Some of these cliff-dwellings are picturesque, some exhibit the prosperity of their owners, but many are squalid. At the water's edge is that which has given its name to the locality, an ancient rock, which once bore some curious Indian carving. Hall (1820) found only one figure remaining, "a man in a sitting posture, making a pipe;" to-day, even thus much has been largely obliterated by the elements. But Antiquity itself is not quite dead. There is a ship-yard here; and a sawmill in active operation, besides the ruins of two others. We also passed Racine (240 miles), another Ohio town—a considerable place, no doubt, although only the tops of the buildings were, from the river level, to be seen above the high bank; these, and an enticing view up the wharf-street. Of more immediate interest, just then, were the heavens, now black and threatening. Putting in hurriedly to the West Virginia shore, we pitched tent on a shelving clay beach, shielded by the ever-present willows, and in five minutes had everything under shelter. With a rumble and bang, and a great flurry of wind, the thunder-storm broke upon us in full fury. There had been no time to run a ditch around the tent, so we spread our cargo atop of the cots. The Boy engineered riverward the streams of water which flowed in beneath the canvas; W——, ever practical, caught rain from the dripping fly, and did the family washing, while the Doctor and I prepared a rather pasty lunch. An hour later, we bailed out Pilgrim, and once more ventured upon our way. It is a busy district between Racine and Sheffield (251 miles). For eleven miles, upon the Ohio bank, there are few breaks between the towns,—Racine, Syracuse, Minersville, Pomeroy, Coalport, Middleport, and Sheffield. Coal mines and salt works abound, with other industries interspersed; and the neighborhood appears highly prosperous. Its metropolis is Pomeroy, in shape a "shoe-string" town,—much of it not over two blocks wide, and stretching along for two miles, at the foot of high palisades. West Virginia is not far behind, in enterprise, with the salt-work towns of New Haven, Hartford, and Mason City,—bespeaking, in their names, a Connecticut ancestry. The afternoon sun gushed out, and the face of Nature was cleanly beautiful, as, leaving the convolutions of the Pomeroy Bend, we entered upon that long river-sweep to the south-by-southwest, which extends from Pomeroy to the Big Sandy, a distance of sixty-eight miles. A mile or two below Cheshire, O. (256 miles), we put in for the night on the West Virginia shore. There is a natural pier of rocky ledge, above that a sloping beach of jagged stone, and then the little grassy terrace which we have made our home. Searching for milk and eggs, I walked along a railway track and then up through a cornfield, to a little log farm-house, whose broad porch was shingled with "shakes" and shaded by a lusty grape-vine. Fences, house, and outbuildings had been newly whitewashed, and there was all about an uncommon air of neatness. A stout little girl of eleven or twelve, met me at the narrow gate opening through the garden palings. It may be because a gypsying trip like this roughens one in many ways,—for man, with long living near to Nature's heart, becomes of the earth, earthy,—that she at first regarded me with suspicious eyes, and, with one hand resting gracefully on her hip, parleyed over the gate, as to what price I was paying in cash, for eggs and milk, and where I hailed from. With her wealth of blond hair done up in a saucy knot behind; her round, honest face; her lips thick, and parted over pearly teeth; her nose saucily retrousse; and her flashing, outspoken blue eyes, this barefooted child of Nature had a certain air of authority, a consciousness of power, which made her womanly beyond her years. She must have seen that I admired her, this little "cracker" queen, in her clean but tattered calico frock; for her mood soon melted, and with much grace she ushered me within the house. Calling Sam, an eight-year-old, to "keep the gen'lem'n comp'ny," she prettily excused herself, and scampered off up the hillside in search of the cows. A barefooted, loose-jointed, gaunt, sandy-haired, freckled, open-eyed youngster is Sam. He came lounging into the room, and, taking my hat, hung it on a peg above the fireplace; then, dropping into a big rocking-chair, with his muddy legs hanging over an arm, at once, with a curious, old-fashioned air, began "keeping company" by telling me of the new litter of pigs, with as little diffidence as though I were an old neighbor who had dropped in on the way to the cross-roads. "And thet thar new Shanghai rooster, mister, ain't he a beauty? He cost a dollar, he did—a dollar in silver, sir!" There was no difficulty in drawing Sam out. He is frankness itself. What was he going to make of himself? Well, he "'lowed" he wanted to be either a locomotive engineer or a steamboat captain—hadn't made up his mind which. "But whatever a boy wants to be, he will be!" said Sam, with the decided tone of a man of the world, who had seen things. I asked Sam what the attractions were in the life of an engine driver. He "'lowed" they went so fast through the world, and saw so many different people; and in their lifetime served on different roads, maybe, and surely they must meet with some excitement. And in that of a steamboat captain? "Oh! now yew're talk'n', mister! A right smart business, thet! A boss'n' o' people 'round, a seein' o' th' world, and noth'n' 't all to do! Now, that's right smart, I take it!" It was plain where his heart lay. He saw the steamers pass the farm daily, and once he had watched one unload at Point Pleasant—well, that was the life for him! Sam will have to be up and doing, if he is to be the monarch of a stern-wheeler on the Ohio; but many another "cracker" boy has attained this exalted station, and Sam is of the sort to win his way. Soon the kine came lowing into the yard, and my piquant young friend who had met me at the gate stood in the doorway talking with us both, while their brother Charley, an awkward, self-conscious lad of ten, took my pail and milked into it the required two quarts. It is a large, square room, where I was so agreeably entertained. The well-chinked logs are scrupulously whitewashed; the parental bed, with gay pillow shams, bought from a peddler, occupies one corner; a huge brick fireplace opens black and yawning, into the base of a great cobblestone chimney reared against the house without, after the fashion of the country; on pegs about, hang the best clothes of the family; while a sewing-machine, a deal table, a cheap little mirror as big as my palm, a few unframed chromos, and a gaudy "Family Record" chart hung in an old looking-glass frame,—with appropriate holes for tintypes of father, mother and children,—complete the furnishings of the apartment, which is parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, and bedroom all in one. My little queen was evidently proud of her throne-room, and noted with satisfaction my interest in the Family Record. When I had paid her for butter and eggs, at retail rates, she threw in an extra egg, and, despite my protests, would have Charley take the pail out to the cow, "for an extra squirt or two, for good measure!" I was bidding them all good-bye, and the queen was pressing me to come again in the morning "fer more stuff, ef ye 'lowed yew wanted any," when the mother of the little brood appeared from over the fields, where she had been to carry water to her lord. A fair, intelligent, rather fine-looking woman, but barefooted like the rest; from her neck behind, dangled a red sunbonnet, and a sunny-haired child of five was in her arms—"sort o' weak in her lungs, poor thing!" she sadly said, as I snapped my fingers at the smiling tot. I tarried a moment with the good mother, as, sitting upon the porch, she serenely smiled upon her children, whose eyes were now lit with responsive love; and I wondered if there were not some romance hidden here, whereby a dash of gentler blood had through this sweet-tempered woman been infused into the coarse clay of the bottom. <blockquote class="footnote">Footnote A: (return) Notably, Ashe's Travels; but Palmer, while saying that "they are the only obstruction to the navigation of the Ohio, except the rapids at Louisville," declares them to be of slight difficulty, and, referring to Ashe's account, says, "Like great part of his book, it is all romance." </blockquote> <blockquote class="footnote">Footnote B: (return) The last buffalo on record, in the Upper Ohio region, was killed in the Great Kanawha Valley, a dozen miles from Charleston, W. Va., in 1815. Five years later, in the same vicinity, was killed probably the last elk seen east of the Ohio. </blockquote> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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