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Afloat on the Ohio

<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> <h4>Fishermen's tales—Skiff nomenclature—Green River—Evansville—Henderson—Audubon and Rafinesque—Floating trade—The Wabash.</h4> Green River Towhead, Monday, June 4th.—We were shopping in Owensboro, this morning, soon after seven o'clock. The business quarter was just stirring into life; and the negroes who were lounging about on every hand were still drowsy, as if they had passed the night there, and were reluctant to be up and doing. There is a pretty court-house in a green park, the streets are well paved, and the shops clean and bright, with their wares mostly under the awnings on the sidewalk, for people appear to live much out of doors here—and well they may, with the temperature 73° at this early hour, and every promise of a scorching day. I wonder if a fisherman could, if he tried, be exact in his statements. One of them, below Owensboro, who kept us company for a mile or two down stream, declared that at this stage of the water he made forty and fifty dollars a week, "'n' I reck'n I ote to be contint." A few miles farther on, another complained that when the river was falling, the water was so muddy the fish would not bite; and even in the best of seasons, a fisherman had "a hard pull uv it; hit ain't no business fer a decent man!" The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing their livelihood must be playing a losing game. There are many beautiful islands on these lower reaches of the river. We followed the narrow channel between Little Hurricane and the Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or three miles, with both banks a dense tangle of drift-wood, weeds and vines. Between Three-Mile Island and Indiana, is another interesting cut-short, where the shores are undisturbed by the work of the main stream, and trees and undergrowth come down to the water's edge; the air is quivering with the songs of birds, and resonant with sweet smells; while over stumps, and dead and fallen trees, grape-vines luxuriantly festoon and cluster. Near the pretty group of French Islands, two government dredges, with their boarding barges, were moored to the Kentucky shore—waiting for coal, we were told, before resuming operations in the planting of a dike. I took a snap-shot at the fleet, and heard one man shout to another, "Bill, did yer notice they've a photograph gallery aboard?" They appear to be a jolly lot, these dredgers, and inclined to take life easily, in accordance with the traditions of government employ. We frequently see skiffs hauled upon the beach, or moored between two protecting posts, to prevent their being swamped by steamer wakes. The names they bear interest us, as betokening, perhaps, the proclivities of their owners. "Little Joe," "Little Jim," "Little Maggie," and like diminutives, are common here, as upon the towing-tugs and steam ferries of broader waters—and now and then we have, by contrast, "Xerxes," "Achilles," "Hercules." Sometimes the skiff is named after its owner's wife or sweetheart, as "Maggie G.," "Polly H.," or from the rustic goddesses, "Pomona," "Flora," "Ceres;" on the Kentucky shore, we have noted "Stonewall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." Literature we found represented to-day, by "Octave Thanet"—the only case on record, for the Ohio-River "cracker" is not greatly given to books. Slang claims for its own, many of these knockabout craft—"U. Bet," "Git Thair," "Go it, Eli," "Whoa, Emma!" and nondescripts, like "Two Doves," "Poker Chip," and "Game Chicken," are not infrequent. In these stately solitudes, towns are far between. Enterprise, Ind. (755 miles), is an unpainted village with a dismal view—back of and around it, wide bottom lands, with hills in the far distance; up and down the river, precipitous banks of clay, with willow fringes on that portion of the shore which is not being cut by the impinging current. Scuffletown, Ky. (767 miles), is uninviting. Newburgh, on the edge of a bluff, across the river in Indiana, is a ragged little place that has seen better days; but the backward view of Newburgh, from below Three-Mile Island, made a pretty picture, the whites and reds of the town standing out in sharp relief against the dark background of the hill. Green River (775 miles), a gentle, rustic stream, enters through the wide bottoms of Kentucky. We had difficulty in finding it in the wilderness of willows—might not have succeeded, indeed, had not the red smokestack of a small steamer suddenly appeared above the bushes. Soon, the puffing craft debouched upon the Ohio, and, quickly overtaking us, passed down toward Evansville. Green River Towhead, two miles below, claimed us for the night. There is a shanty, midway on the island, and at the lower end the landing of a railway-transfer. We have our camp at the upper end, in a bed of spotless white sand, thick grown to dwarf willows. Entangled drift-wood lies about in monster heaps, lodged in depressions of the land, or against stout tree-trunks; a low bar of gravel connects our home with Green River Island, lying close against the Indiana bank; sand-flies freely joined us at dinner, and I hear, as I write, the drone of a solitary mosquito,—the first in many days; while upon the bar, at sunset, a score of turkey-buzzards held silent council, some of them occasionally rising and wheeling about in mid-air, then slowly lighting and stretching their necks, and flapping their wings most solemnly, before rejoining the conference. <hr /> 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 assertion 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 passing beneath the railway bridge at Henderson, thunder sounded, and the western sky suddenly blackened. Pulling rapidly in to the town shore, 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 associated 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 cushions. 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 shore 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 classic 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. <hr /> 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 pushing us swiftly on. In seeking the lee shore, 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 brushing the fringe of willows and sycamores and maples on low-lying shores. 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 grasses 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 glass 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 shore 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 grass, 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 shore—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-rushing body of clear, green water, which at first boldly pushes over to the heavily-willowed Kentucky shore 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 passing 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 shore could faintly be heard the barking of dogs at the little "cracker" farmsteads hid deep in the lowland forest. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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