<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
<h4>The story of North Bend—The "shakes"—Driftwood—Rabbit
Hash—A side-trip
To Big Bone Lick.</h4>
<p><span class="smcap">Near Petersburg, Ky.</span>, Friday, May
25th.—This morning, an hour before noon, as
we looked upon the river from the top of the
Cincinnati wharf, a wild scene presented itself.
The shore up and down, as far as could be
seen, was densely lined with packets and
freighters; beyond them, the great stream,
here half a mile wide, was rushing past like a
mill-race, and black with all manner of drift,
some of it formed into great rafts from each of
which sprawled a network of huge branches.
Had we been strangers to this offscouring of a
thousand miles of beach, swirling past us at a
six-mile gait, we might well have doubted the
prudence of launching little Pilgrim upon such
a sea. But for two days past, we had been
amidst something of the sort, and knew that
to cautious canoeists it was less dangerous
than it appeared.</p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page183" id="page183"></SPAN></span>
<p>A strong head wind, meeting this surging
tide, is lashing it into a white-capped fury.
But lying to with paddle and oars, and dodging
ferries and towing-tugs as best we may, Pilgrim
bears us swiftly past the long line of steamers
at the wharf, past Newport and Covington,
and the insignificant Licking,<SPAN name="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13"></SPAN><SPAN href="#footnote13"><sup>A</sup></SPAN> and out under
great railway bridges which cobweb the sky.
Soon Cincinnati, shrouded in smoke, has disappeared
around the bend, and we are in the
fast-thinning suburbs—homes of beer-gardens
and excursion barges, havens for freight-flats,
and villas of low and high degree.</p>
<p>When we are out here in the swim, the
drift-strewn stream has a more peaceful aspect
than when looked at from the shore. Instead
of rushing past as if dooming to destruction
everything else afloat, the debris falls behind,
when we row, for our progress is then the
greater. Dropping our oars, our gruesome
companions on the river pass us slowly, for
they catch less wind than we; and then, so
silent the steady march of all, we seem to be
drifting up-stream, until on glancing at the
shore the hills appear to be swiftly going down
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page184" id="page184"></SPAN></span>
and the willow fringes up,—until the sight
makes us dizzy, and we are content to be at
quits with these optical delusions.</p>
<p>We no longer have the beach of gravel or
sand, or strip of clay knee-deep in mud. The
water, now twelve feet higher than before the
rise, has covered all; it is, indeed, swaying the
branches of sycamores and willows, and meeting
the edges of the corn-fields of venturesome
farmers who have cultivated far down, taking
the risk of a "June fresh." Often could we,
if we wished, row quite within the bulwark of
willows, where a week ago we would have
ventured to camp.</p>
<p>The Kentucky side, to-day, from Covington
out, has been thoroughly rustic, seldom broken
by settlement; while Ohio has given us a succession
of suburban towns all the way out to
North Bend (482 miles), which is a small manufacturing
place, lying on a narrow bottom at
the base of a convolution of gentle, wooded
hills. One sees that Cincinnati has a better
and a broader base; North Bend was handicapped
by nature, in its early race.</p>
<p>When Ohio came into the Union (1803), it
was specified that the boundary between her
and Indiana should be a line running due
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page185" id="page185"></SPAN></span>
north from the mouth of the Big Miami. But
the latter, an erratic stream, frequently the
victim of floods, comes wriggling down to the
Ohio through a broad bottom grown thick to
willows, and in times of high water its mouth
is a changeable locality. The boundary monument
is planted on the meridian of what was
the mouth, ninety-odd years ago; but to-day
the Miami breaks through an opening in the
quivering line of willow forest, a hundred yards
eastward (487 miles).</p>
<p>Garrison Creek is a modest Kentucky affluent,
just above the Miami's mouth. At the
point, a group of rustics sat on a log at the
bank-top, watching us approach. Landing in
search of milk and water, I was taken by one
of them in a lumbersome skiff a short distance
up the creek, and presented to his family.
They are genuine "crackers," of the coarsest
type—tall, lean, sallow, fishy-eyed, with tow-colored
hair, an ungainly gait, barefooted, and
in nondescript clothing all patches and tatters.
The tousle-headed woman, surrounded by her
copies in miniature, keeps the milk neatly, in
an outer dairy, perhaps because of market
requirements; but in the crazy old log-house,
pigs and chickens are free comers, and the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page186" id="page186"></SPAN></span>
cistern from which they drink is foul. Here
in this damp, low pocket of a bottom, annually
flooded to the door-sill, in the midst of vegetation
of the rankest order, and quite unheedful
of the simplest of sanitary laws, these
yellow-skinned "crackers" are cradled, wedded,
and biered. And there are thousands
like unto them, for we are now in the heart of
the "shake" country, and shall hear enough
of the plague through the remainder of our
pilgrimage. As for ourselves, we fear not, for
it is not until autumn that danger is imminent,
and we are taking due precaution under the
Doctor's guidance.</p>
<p>Two miles beyond, is the Indiana town of
Lawrenceburg, with the unkempt aspect so
common to the small river places; and two
miles still farther, on a Kentucky bottom,
Petersburg, whose chiefest building, as viewed
from the stream, is a huge distillery. On a
high sandy terrace, a mile or so below, we
pitch our nightly camp. All about are willows,
rustling musically in the evening breeze,
and, soaring far aloft, the now familiar sycamores.
Nearly opposite, in Indiana, the little
city of Aurora is sparkling with points of light,
strains of dance music reach us over the way,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page187" id="page187"></SPAN></span>
and occasional shouts and gay laughter; while
now and then, in the thickening dusk of the
long day, we hear skiffs go chucking by from
Petersburg way, and the gleeful voices of men
and women doubtless being ferried to the ball.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="smcap">Near Warsaw, Ky.</span>, Saturday, May 26th.—Our
first mosquito appeared last night, but he
was easily slaughtered. It has been a comfort
to be free, thus far, from these pests of
camp life. We had prepared for them by
laying in a bolt of black tarlatan at Wheeling,—greatly
superior this, to ordinary white
mosquito bar,—but thus far it has remained
in the shopman's wrapper.</p>
<p>The fog this morning was of the heaviest.
At 4 o'clock we were awakened by the sharp
clanging of a pilot's signal bell, and there,
poking her nose in among our willows, a dozen
feet from the tent, was the "Big Sandy," one
of the St. Louis & Cincinnati packet line.
She had evidently lost her bearings in the
mist; but with a deal of ringing, and a noisy
churning of the water by the reversed paddle-wheel,
pulled out and disappeared into the
gloom.</p>
<p>The river, still rising, is sweeping down an
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page188" id="page188"></SPAN></span>
ever-increasing body of rubbish. Islands and
beaches, away back to the Alleghanies on the
main stream, and on thousands of miles of
affluents, are yielding up those vast rafts of
drift-wood and fallen timber, which have continually
impressed us on our way with a
sense of the enormous wastage everywhere in
progress—necessary, of course, in view of the
prohibitive cost of transportation. Nevertheless,
one thinks pitifully of the tens of thousands
who, in congested districts, each winter
suffer unto death for want of fuel; and here is
this wealth of forest debris, the useless plaything
of the river. But not only wreckage of
this character is borne upon the flood. The
thievish river has picked up valuable saw-logs
that have run astray, lumber of many sorts,
boxes, barrels—and now and then the body of
a cow or horse that has tumbled to its death
from some treacherous clay-cliff or rocky terrace.
The beaches have been swept clean by
the rushing flood, of whatever lay upon them,
be it good or bad, for the great scavenger exercises
no discretion.</p>
<p>The bulk of the matter now follows the
current in an almost solid raft, as it caroms
from shore to shore. Having swift water
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page189" id="page189"></SPAN></span>
everywhere at this stage, for the most part we
avoid entangling Pilgrim in the procession,
but row upon the outskirts, interested in the
curious medley, and observant of the many
birds which perch upon the branches of the
floating trees and sing blithely on their way.
The current bears hard upon the Aurora
beach, and townsfolk by scores are out in
skiffs or are standing by the water's edge, engaged
with boat-hooks in spearing choice
morsels from the debris rushing by their
door—heaping it upon the shore to dry, or
gathering it in little rafts which they moor
to the bank. It is a busy scene; the wreckers,
men, women, and children alike, are so engaged
in their grab-bag game that they have
no eyes for us; unobserved, we watch them
at close range, and speculate upon their respective
chances.</p>
<p>Rabbit Hash, Ky. (502 miles), is a crude
hamlet of a hundred souls, lying nestled in a
green amphitheater. A horse-power ferry runs
over to the larger village of Rising Sun, its
Indiana neighbor. There is a small general
store in Rabbit Hash, with postoffice and
paint-shop attachment, and near by a tobacco
warehouse and a blacksmith shop, with a few
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page190" id="page190"></SPAN></span>
cottages scattered at intervals over the bottom.
The postmaster, who is also the storekeeper
and painter, greeted me with joy, as
I deposited with him mail-matter bearing
eighteen cents' worth of stamps; for his is one
of those offices where the salary is the value
of the stamps cancelled. It is not every day
that so liberal a patron comes along.</p>
<p>"Jemimi! Bill! but guv'm'nt business 's
look'n' up—there'll be some o' th' rest o' us
a-want'n this yere off'c', a ter nex' 'lection, I
reck'n'."</p>
<p>It was the blacksmith, who is also the ferryman,
who thus bantered the delighted postmaster,—a
broad-faced, big-chested, brown-armed
man, with his neck-muscles standing
out like cords, and his mild blue eyes dancing
with fun, this rustic disciple of Tubal Cain.
He sat just without the door, leather apron on,
and his red shirt-sleeves rolled up, playing
checkers on an upturned soap-box, with a jolly
fat farmer from the hill-country, whose broad
straw hat was cocked on the back of his bald
head. The merry laughter of the two was infectious.
The half-dozen spectators, small
farmers whose teams and saddle-horses were
hitched to the postoffice railing, were themselves
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page191" id="page191"></SPAN></span>
hilarious over the game; and a saffron-skinned,
hollow-cheeked woman in a blue sunbonnet,
and with a market-basket over her arm,
stopped for a moment at the threshold to look
on, and then passed within the store, her
eyes having caught the merriment, although
her facial muscles had apparently lost their
power of smiling.</p>
<p>Joining the little company, I found that the
farmer was a blundering player, but made up
in fun what he lacked in science. I tried to
ascertain the origin of the name Rabbit Hash,
as applied to the hamlet. Every one had a
different opinion, evidently invented on the
spur of the moment, but all "'lowed" that
none but the tobacco agent could tell, and he
was off in the country for the day; as for themselves,
they had, they confessed, never thought
of it before. It always had been Rabbit Hash,
and like enough would be to the end of time.</p>
<p>We are on the lookout for Big Bone Creek,
wishing to make a side trip to the famous Big
Bone Lick, but among the many openings
through the willows of the Kentucky shore we
may well miss it, hence make constant inquiry
as we proceed. There was a houseboat in
the mouth of one goodly affluent. As we hove
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page192" id="page192"></SPAN></span>
in sight, a fat woman, whose gunny-sack apron
was her chief attire, hurried up the gang-plank
and disappeared within.</p>
<p>"Hello, the boat!" one of us hailed.</p>
<p>The woman's fuzzy head appeared at the
window.</p>
<p>"What creek is this?"</p>
<p>"Gunpowder, I reck'n!"—in a deep, man-like
voice.</p>
<p>"How far below is Big Bone?"</p>
<p>"Jist a piece!"</p>
<p>"How many miles?"</p>
<p>"Two, I reck'n."</p>
<p>Big Bone Creek (512 miles), some fifty or
sixty feet wide at the mouth, opens through a
willow patch, between pretty, sloping hills.
A houseboat lay just within—a favorite situation
for them, these creek mouths, for here
they are undisturbed by steamer wakes, and
the fishing is usually good. The proprietor, a
rather distinguished-looking mulatto, despite
his old clothes and plantation straw-hat, was
sitting in a chair at his cabin door, angling;
his white wife was leaning over him lovingly,
as we shot into the scene, but at once withdrew
inside. This man, with his side-whiskers
and fine air, may have been a head-waiter or
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page193" id="page193"></SPAN></span>
a dance-fiddler in better days; but his soft,
plaintive voice, and hacking cough, bespoke
the invalid. He told us what he knew about
the creek, which was little enough, as he had
but recently come to these parts.</p>
<p>At an ordinary stage in the Ohio, the Big
Bone cannot be ascended in a skiff for more
than half a mile; now, upon the backset, we
are able to proceed for two miles, leaving but
another two miles of walking to the Lick itself.
The creek curves gracefully around the bases
of the sugar-loaf hills of the interior. Under
the swaying arch of willows, and of ragged,
sprawling sycamores, their bark all patched
with green and gray and buff and white, we
have charming vistas—the quiet water, thick
grown with aquatic plants; the winding banks,
bearing green-dragons and many another flower
loving damp shade; the frequent rocky palisades,
oozing with springs; and great blue
herons, stretching their long necks in wonder,
and then setting off with a stately flight which
reminds one of the cranes on Japanese ware.
Through the dense fringe of vegetation, we
have occasional glimpses of the hillside farms—their
sloping fields sprinkled with stones, their
often barren pastures, numerous abandoned
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page194" id="page194"></SPAN></span>
tracts overgrown with weeds, and blue-grass
lush in the meadows. Along the edges of
the Creek, and in little pocket bottoms, the
varied vegetation has a sub-tropical luxuriance,
and in this now close, warm air, there is a rank
smell suggestive of malaria.</p>
<p>These bottoms are annually overflowed, so
that the crude little farmsteads are on the
rising ground—whitewashed cabins, many of
them of logs, serve as houses; for stock, there
are the veriest shanties, affording practically
no shelter; best of all, the rude tobacco-drying
sheds, in many of which some of last year's
crop can still be seen, hanging on the strips.
We are out of the world, here; and barefooted
men and boys, who with listless air are fishing
from the banks, gaze at us in dull wonder as
we thread our tortuous way.</p>
<p>Finally, we learned that we could with profit
go no higher. Before us were two miles of
what was described as the roughest sort of hill
road, and the afternoon sun was powerful; so
W—— accepted the invitation of a rustic fisherman
to rest with his "women folks" in a little
cabin up the hill a bit. Seeing her safely
housed with the good-natured "cracker" farm-wife,
the Doctor, the Boy, and I trudged off
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page195" id="page195"></SPAN></span>
toward Big Bone Lick. The waxy clay of the
roadbed had recently been wetted by a shower;
the walking, consequently, was none of the
best. But we were repaid with charming
views of hill and vale, a softly-rolling scene
dotted with little gray and brown fields, clumps
of woodland, rail-fenced pastures, and cabins
of the crudest sort—for in the autumn-tide,
the curse of malaria haunts the basin of the
Big Bone, and none but he of fortune spurned
would care here in this beauty-spot to plant
his vine and fig-tree. Now and then our path
leads us across the winding creek, which in
these upper reaches tumbles noisily over ledges
of jagged rock, above which luxuriant sycamores,
and elms, and maples arch gracefully.
At each picturesque fording-place, with its
inevitable watering-pool, are stepping-stones
for foot pilgrims; often a flock of geese are
sailing in the pool, with craned necks and
flapping wings hissing defiance to disturbers
of their sylvan peace.</p>
<p>The travelers we meet are on horseback—most
of them the yellow-skinned, hollow-cheeked
folk, with lack-luster eyes, whom we
note in the cabin doors, or dawdling about
their daily routine. On nearing the Lick,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page196" id="page196"></SPAN></span>
two young horsewomen, out of the common,
look interestedly at us, and I stop to inquire
the way, although the village spire is peering
above the tree-tops yonder. Pretty, buxom,
sweet-faced lassies, these, with soft, pleasant
voices, each with her market-basket over her
arm, going homeward from shopping. It
would be interesting to know their story—what
it is that brings these daughters of a
brighter world here into this valley of the living
death.</p>
<p>Two hundred yards farther, where the road
forks, and the one at the right hand ascends
to the small hamlet of Big Bone Lick, there is
an interesting picture beneath the way-post: a
girl in a blue calico gown, her face deep hidden
in her red sunbonnet, sits upon a chestnut
mount, with a laden market-basket before her;
while by her side, astride a coal-black pony,
which fretfully paws to be on his way, is a
roughly dressed youth, his face shaded by a
broad slouched hat of the cowboy order.
They have evidently met there by appointment,
and are so earnestly conversing—she
with her hand resting lovingly, perhaps deprecatingly,
upon his bridle-arm, and his free
hand nervously stroking her horse's mane,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page197" id="page197"></SPAN></span>
while his eyes are far afield—that they do not
observe us as we pass; and we are free to
weave from the incident any sort of cracker
romance which fancy may dictate.</p>
<p>The source of Big Bone Creek is a marshy
basin some fifty acres in extent, rimmed with
gently-sloping hills, and freely pitted with
copious springs of a water strongly sulphurous
in taste, with a suggestion of salt. The odor
is so powerful as to be all-pervading, a quarter
of a mile away, and to be readily detected at
twice that distance. This collection of springs
constitutes Big Bone Lick, probably the most
famous of the many similar licks in Kentucky,
Indiana, and Illinois.</p>
<p>The salt licks of the Ohio basin were from
the earliest times resorted to in great numbers
by wild beasts, and were favorite camping-grounds
for Indians, and for white hunters
and explorers. This one was first visited by
the French as early as 1729, and became
famous because of the great quantities of remains
of animals which lay all over the marsh,
particularly noticeable being the gigantic bones
of the extinct mammoth—hence the name
adopted by the earliest American hunters,
"Big Bone." These monsters had evidently
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page198" id="page198"></SPAN></span>
been mired in the swamp, while seeking to
lick the salty mud, and died in their tracks.
Pioneer chronicles abound in references to the
Lick, and we read frequently of hunting-parties
using the ribs of the mammoth for tent
poles, and sections of the vertebræ as camp
stools and tables. But in our own day, there
are no surface evidences of this once rich
treasure of giant fossils; although occasionally
a "find" is made by enterprising excavators,—several
bones having thus been unearthed only
a week ago. They are now on exhibition in
the neighboring village, preparatory to being
shipped to an Eastern museum.</p>
<p>As we hurried back over the rolling highway,
thunder-clouds grandly rose out of the west,
and great drops of rain gave us moist warning
of the coming storm. W—— was watching us
from the cabin door, as we made the last
turning in the road, and, accompanied by the
farm-wife and her two daughters, came tripping
down to the landing. She had been
entertained in the one down-stairs room, as
royally as these honest cracker women-folk
knew how; seated in the family rocking-chair,
she had heard in those two hours the social
gossip of a wide neighborhood; learned, too,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page199" id="page199"></SPAN></span>
that the cold, wet weather of the last fortnight
had killed turkey-chicks and goslings by
the score; heard of the damage being done to
corn and tobacco, by the prevalent high water;
was told how Bess and Brindle fared, off in
the rocky pasture which yields little else than
mulleins; and how far back Towser had to go,
to claim relationship to a collie. "And
weren't we really show-people, going down
the river this way, in a skiff? or, if we weren't
show-people, had we an agency for something?
or, were we only in trade?" It seems a difficult
task to make these people on the bottoms
believe that we are skiffing it for pleasure—it
is a sort of pleasure so far removed from their
notions of the fitness of things; and so at last
we have given up trying, and let them think
of our pilgrimage what they will.</p>
<p>The entire family now assembled on the
muddy bank, and bade us a really affectionate
farewell, as if we had been, in this isolated
corner of the world, most welcome guests who
were going all too soon. In a few strokes
of the oars we were rounding the bend; and
waving our hands at the little knot of watchers,
went forth from their lives, doubtless
forever.</p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page200" id="page200"></SPAN></span>
<p>The storm soon burst upon us in full fury.
Clad in rubber, we rested under giant trees, or
beneath projecting rock ledges, taking advantage
of occasional lulls to push on for a few
rods to some new shelter. The numerous
little hillside runs which, in our journey up,
were but dry gullies choked with leaves and
boulders, were now brimming with muddy torrents,
rushing all foam-flecked and with deafening
roar into the central stream. At last
the cloud curtain rolled away, the sun gushed
out with fiery rays, the arch of foliage sparkled
with splendor—in meadow and on hillside, the
face of Nature was cleanly beautiful.</p>
<p>At the creek mouth, the distinguished mulatto
still was fishing from his chair, and standing
by his side was his wife throwing a spoon.
They nodded to us pleasantly, as old friends
returned. Gliding by their boat, Pilgrim was
soon once more in the full current of the swift-flowing
Ohio.</p>
<p>We are high up to-night, on a little grass
terrace in Kentucky, two miles above Warsaw.
The usual country road lies back of us, a rod
or two, and then a slender field surmounted
by a woodland hill. Fortune favors us, almost
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page201" id="page201"></SPAN></span>
nightly, with beautiful abiding-places. In no
place could we sleep more comfortably than
in our cotton home.</p>
<blockquote class="footnote"><SPAN name="footnote13" name="footnote13"></SPAN><b>Footnote A:</b><SPAN href="#footnotetag13"> (return) </SPAN><p>So called from the Big Buffalo Lick, upon its banks.</p>
</blockquote>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page202" id="page202"></SPAN></span>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />