The "export trade" of the Indiana farmers was with New Orleans, the
goods being carried on flatboats. The traffic called for a larger
number of resolute, hardy, and honest men, as, besides the vicissitudes
of fickle navigation, was the peril from thieves. Abraham early made
acquaintance with this course as he accompanied his father in such a
venture down the great river. Then passed apprenticeship, he built a
boat for Gentry--merchant of Gentryville--and "sailed" it, with the
storekeeper's son Allen as bow-hand or first officer. He and his crew
of one started from the Ohio River landing and safely reached the
Crescent City--safely as to cargo and bodies, but not without a narrow
escape. At Baton Rouge, a little ahead of the haven, the boat was tied
up at a plantation, and the two were asleep, when they became objects
of an attack from a river pest--a band of refugee negroes and similar
lawless rogues.
Luckily their approach was heard and the two awoke. Having been warned
that the desperadoes would not stand on trifles, the young men armed
themselves with clubs and leaped ashore, after driving the pirates off
the deck. They pursued them, too, with such an uproar that their number
was multiplied in the runaways' mind. Both returned wounded--Abraham
retaining a mark over the right eye, noticeable in after life, and not
to his facial improvement. They immediately unhitched the boat and
stood out in the channel.
"I wish we had carried weapons," sighed Lincoln. "Going to war without
shooting-irons is not what the Quakers hold it to be."
"If we had been armed," returned Allen, as regretfully, "we would have
made the feathers fly!"
It had not been too dark for the shade of the enemy to be perceived, so
his skipper gave one of his earnest laughs, and replied:
"You mean _wool_, I reckon!"
* * * * *