Columbia--Newport--Cincinnati--Port William--Louisville and the falls.
May 7th, at 8 P. M. departed from Maysville--8th, the Ohio is safe
and clear of obstructions from Maysville to the Little Miami river,
fifty-six miles.
Little Miami is a beautiful river, sixty or seventy yards wide, falling
into the Ohio on the right from the northward.
The village of Columbia just below, is beautifully situated on an
extensive bottom. Seven miles lower we passed on the left the village
of Newport, containing a large brick arsenal and magazine, the property
of the general government. It is just above the conflux of Licking
river, which is about one hundred yards wide. The banks of the Ohio
display a great sameness so far, they having a gentle slope, and rich
soil, thickly wooded and thinly inhabited.
We stopped at Cincinnati which is delightfully situated just opposite
the mouth of Licking river.[166]--This town occupies more ground,
and seems to contain nearly as many houses as Lexington. It is on a
double bank like Steubenville, and the streets are in right lines,
intersecting at right angles. The houses are many of them of brick, and
they are all in general well built, well painted, and have that air of
neatness which is so conspicuous in Connecticut and Jersey, from which
latter state, this part of the state of Ohio is principally settled.
Some of the new brick houses {233} are of three stories with flat
roofs, and there is one of four stories now building. Mr. Jacob Burnet,
an eminent lawyer, has a handsome brick house beautifully situated
just outside the west end of the town.[167] Cincinnati, then named
Fort Washington, was one of the first military posts occupied by the
Americans in the western country, but I observed no remains of the old
fort. It is now the capital of Hamilton county, and is the largest town
in the state.
After remaining at Cincinnati from three o’clock until half past five,
we then proceeded, passing Col. Suydam’s very handsome stone house with
piazzas and balconies, in the French West India style, three or four
miles below.
May 9th, having passed the Big Miami, the boundary between Ohio and
the territory of Indiana in the night, at seven in the morning we
were abreast of Big Bone Lick creek, so called from a skeleton of
the mammoth being found here.[168] This is fifty-nine miles below
Cincinnati. The tiresome sameness of the banks continued until noon
when being abreast of one Reamy’s, thirty-two miles further, the
settlements became thicker on the Kentucky side, and the river assumed
a more cheerful appearance. I observed some farms on the opposite shore
of Indiana, at one of which I was informed was a vineyard.
At three P. M. we stopped at Port William, delightfully situated
just above the embouchure of Kentucky river, which is from eighty
to a hundred yards wide. This is the capital of Gallatin county, and
contains twenty-one houses, many of which are of brick, but all rather
in a state of decay.[169] The lands appear good, but probably the
country is not in a sufficient state of improvement to admit of a town
here yet. Frankfort the capital of the state, is on the Kentucky, only
sixty miles above Port William.
{234} At four we gave our boats to the stream, and after floating all
night seventy-eight miles, past some islands and some thinly scattering
settlements, we rowed into Bear Grass creek, which forms a commodious
little harbour without current for Louisville, May 10th, at 9 A. M.
Louisville is most delightfully situated on an elevated plain to which
the ascent from the creek and river is gradual, being just slope enough
to admit of hanging gardens with terraces, which doctor Gault at the
upper, and two Messrs. Buttets at the lower end of the town have
availed themselves of, in laying out their gardens very handsomely
and with taste. From the latter, the view both up and down the river
is truly delightful. Looking upwards, a reach of five or six miles
presents itself, and turning the eye to the left, Jeffersonville, a
neat village of thirty houses, in Indiana, about a mile distant, is
next seen. The eye still turning a little more to the left, next rests
upon a high point where general Clark first encamped his little army,
about thirty years ago, when he descended the river to make a campaign
against the Indians, at which time Louisville, and almost the whole of
Kentucky was a wilderness covered with forests. The rapids or falls (as
they are called) of the Ohio, are the next objects which strike the
observer. They are formed by a range of rocks and low islands, which
extend across the river, the deepest channel through which is near the
Indiana shore, and has only six feet water, and that even very narrow
when the river is low. The fall here has been proved by a level to be
twenty-two inches and a half in two miles, from Bear Grass creek to
Shipping Port, which causes a velocity of current of about twelve miles
an hour in the channel. Clarksville, a new village in Indiana at the
lower end of the rapids, is next seen, beyond which Silver creek hills,
a moderately high and even chain, bound the view five or six miles
distant.[170] Continuing {235} to turn to the left, Rock island, and
the same chain of hills appearing over it, finish two thirds of a very
fine panorama. The town and surrounding forests form the other third.
Louisville consists of one principal and very handsome street, about
half a mile long, tolerably compactly built, and the houses generally
superiour to any I have seen in the western country with the exception
of Lexington. Most are of handsome brick, and some are three stories,
with a parapet wall on the top in the modern European taste, which in
front gives them the appearance of having flat roofs.
I had thought Cincinnati one of the most beautiful towns I had seen in
America, but Louisville, which is almost as large, equals it in beauty,
and in the opinion of many excels it. It was considered as unhealthy
which impeded its progress, until three or four years ago, when
probably in consequence of the surrounding country being more opened,
bilious complaints ceased to be so frequent, and it is now considered
by the inhabitants as healthy as any town on the river. There is a
market house, where is a very good market every Wednesday and Saturday.
The court-house is a plain two story stone building, with a square roof
and small belfry. There are bells here on the roofs of the taverns
as in Lexington, to summon the guests to their meals. Great retail
business is done here, and much produce is shipped to New Orleans.
May 11.--At four P. M. Mr. Nelson, a pilot, came on board and conducted
the boats through the falls, by the Kentucky schute, and in forty-five
minutes we moored at Shippingport, where we found commodore Peters’s
boat and officers, and captain Nevitt’s gun boat, all bound to New
Orleans in a few days.
{236} Shippingport is a fine harbour, there being no current in it, but
the banks are rather low, so as to be inundated at very high floods.
Mr. Berthoud, who has a handsome house here, is connected with Mr.
Tarascon of Louisville in one of the finest rope-walks in the United
States. It is twelve hundred feet long, of which seven hundred and
fifty are covered.[171]
A little above the port is a mill wrought by the Ohio, the race being
formed by a small bank, which has been cut through purposely.
FOOTNOTES:
[166] The Licking was explored by Harrod’s party in 1774, and five
years later Bowman’s unfortunate expedition rendezvoused at its mouth.
The next year (1780) George Rogers Clark in his raid against the
Chillicothe Indians built two blockhouses on the site of Cincinnati;
and again in 1782 started from hence against the Miamis. In 1785-86,
the Federal Government built Fort Finney above the mouth of the
Great Miami, where Clark held a treaty in the latter year. After the
erection of the Northwest Territory, and the opening of the district
to landholders, John Cleves Symmes bought a million acres between the
two Miami rivers, and towns were soon formed. Matthias Denman (1788)
purchased of Symmes for two hundred dollars a square mile opposite the
mouth of the Licking, and forming a partnership with Robert Patterson
of Lexington, and John Filson, a Kentucky schoolmaster, founded a town
which the latter entitled Losantiville, “town opposite the mouth of the
Licking.” This fantastic compound was retained until Governor St. Clair
(1790) changed the name to Cincinnati in honor of the military society.
Fort Washington, government post, built in 1790, protected the infant
settlement.
Meanwhile Symmes had platted a town on the Great Miami, which he
called North Bend, and desired to have established as the capital of
the new Northwest Territory. Columbia was also laid out at the mouth
of the Little Miami, and the three towns contended for leadership
until Cincinnati was made capital of the Territory in 1800, and began
to flourish apace. The garrison was removed from Fort Washington to
Newport barracks in 1804. The residence of Colonel Suydam has given its
name to Suydamsville, a western suburb of Cincinnati.--ED.
[167] Jacob Burnet, born in New Jersey in 1770, was of Scotch descent.
When a young man of twenty-six he came to the Northwest Territory to
practice law, and settled at Cincinnati. His public services were as
member of the territorial council (1798), as supreme judge of the
State, and as United States Senator. He was the author of _Notes on
the Early Settlement of the Northwestern Territory_ (Cincinnati,
1847), a valuable pioneer history. Burnet’s home was the scene of
noteworthy hospitality, all prominent visitors to the region being
there entertained. A portion of his estate is now a public park for
Cincinnati, known as Burnet Woods.--ED.
[168] For note on Big Bone Lick, see Croghan’s _Journals_, vol. i of
this series, p. 135, note 104.--ED.
[169] Port William is now called Carrollton, and is the county-seat of
Carroll County, erected out of the limits of Gallatin in 1838.--ED.
[170] On the early history of Louisville, see Croghan’s _Journals_,
vol. i of this series, p. 136, note 106.
Clarksville was established (1783) on the grant of lands given by
the Virginia legislature to the soldiers who had served in Clark’s
campaign in the Illinois. Much was expected of this new town opposite
the Falls of Ohio; but it never flourished, and gradually declined
before its more prosperous neighbor, Jeffersonville (founded in 1802),
and has now become but a suburb of the manufacturing town of New
Albany. General George Rogers Clark had a home on a point of rocks near
Clarksville.--ED.
[171] Shippingsport--now a portion of the city of Louisville--was
incorporated under the name of Campbellville in 1785. The name
was changed when James Berthoud became its proprietor in 1805.
Shippingsport was an important starting place for traffic west and
south from Louisville, until the construction of the Louisville and
Portland Canal in 1832.
The Tarascons were brothers who came from France to Kentucky, early
in the nineteenth century. They built large mills at Shippingsport
(1815-19), and were known as enterprising and public-spirited
citizens.--ED.