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Transcriber's note:
Spellings and hyphenations are as in the original document.
Hyphenation was inconsistent, with the following words
appearing both with and without hyphens: saw-mill, tread-mill,
drift-wood, back-set, cotton-wood, farm-house, semi-circular,
search-light, fire-brick, out-door, ship-yard(s), and
house-boat(s). The name "Celeron" is used interchangebly with
"Celoron".
AFLOAT ON THE OHIO
An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff,
from Redstone to Cairo
by
REUBEN GOLD THWAITES
Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
Editor of "The Jesuit Relations,"
Author of "The Colonies, 1492-1750," "Historic Waterways,"
"The Story of Wisconsin," "Our Cycling Tour in England,"
etc., etc.
Chicago
Way & Williams
1897
Copyright
by Reuben Gold Thwaites
A.D., 1897
_To
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, Ph. D.,
Professor of American History in the University of
Wisconsin, who loves his native West
and with rare insight and gift of phrase
interprets her story,
this Log of the "Pilgrim" is cordially inscribed._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface. xi
Chapter I.
On the Monongahela--The over-mountain path--Redstone
Old Fort--The Youghiogheny--Braddock's defeat. 1
Chapter II.
First day on the Ohio--At Logstown. 22
Chapter III.
Shingis Old Town--The dynamiter--Yellow Creek. 29
Chapter IV.
An industrial region--Steubenville--Mingo Bottom--In
a steel mill--Indian character. 39
Chapter V.
House-boat life--Decadence of steamboat traffic--Wheeling,
and Wheeling Creek. 50
Chapter VI.
The Big Grave--Washington and Round Bottom--A
lazy man's paradise--Captina Creek--George Rogers
Clark at Fish Creek--Southern types. 64
Chapter VII.
In Dixie--Oil and natural gas, at Witten's Bottom--The
Long Reach--Photographing crackers--Visitors in camp. 77
Chapter VIII.
Life ashore and afloat--Marietta, "the Plymouth Rock
of the West"--The Little Kanawha--The story of
Blennerhassett's Island. 87
Chapter IX.
Poor whites--First library in the West--An hour at
Hockingport--A hermit fisher. 99
Chapter X.
Cliff-dwellers, on Long Bottom--Pomeroy Bend--Letart's
Island, and Rapids--Game, in the early day--Rainy
weather--In a "cracker" home. 109
Chapter XI.
Battle of Point Pleasant--The story of
Gallipolis--Rosebud--Huntington--The genesis of a
houseboater. 125
Chapter XII.
In a fog--The Big Sandy--Rainy weather--Operatic
gypsies--An ancient tavern. 139
Chapter XIII.
The Scioto, and the Shawanese--A night at
Rome--Limestone--Keels, flats, and boatmen of the
olden time. 150
Chapter XIV.
Produce-boats--A dead town--On the Great Bend--Grant's
birthplace--The Little Miami--The genesis
of Cincinnati. 168
Chapter XV.
The story of North Bend--The "shakes"--Driftwood--Rabbit
hash--A side-trip to Big Bone Lick. 182
Chapter XVI.
New Switzerland--An old-time river pilot--Houseboat
life on the lower reaches--A philosopher in
rags--Wooded solitudes--Arrival at Louisville. 202
Chapter XVII.
Storied Louisville--Red Indians and white--A night on
Sand Island--New Albany--Riverside hermits--The
river falling--A deserted village--An ideal camp. 218
Chapter XVIII.
Village life--A traveling photographer--On a country
road--Studies in color--Again among colliers--In
sweet content--A ferry romance. 233
Chapter XIX.
Fishermen's tales--Skiff nomenclature--Green
River--Evansville--Henderson--Audubon and
Rafinesque--Floating shops--The Wabash. 251
Chapter XX.
Shawneetown--Farm-houses on stilts--Cave-in-Rock--Island
nights. 267
Chapter XXI.
The Cumberland and the Tennessee--Stately solitudes--Old
Fort Massac--Dead towns in Egypt--The
last camp--Cairo. 280
_Appendix A._--Historical outline of Ohio Valley
settlement. 296
_Appendix B._--Selected list of Journals of previous
travelers down the Ohio. 320
Index. 329
PREFACE.
There were four of us pilgrims--my Wife, our Boy of ten and a half
years, the Doctor, and I. My object in going--the others went for the
outing--was to gather "local color" for work in Western history. The
Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West.
I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various
phases,--to see with my own eyes what the borderers saw; in
imagination, to redress the pioneer stage, and repeople it.
A motley company have here performed their parts: Savages of the
mound-building age, rearing upon these banks curious earthworks for
archaeologists of the nineteenth century to puzzle over; Iroquois
war-parties, silently swooping upon sleeping villages of the
Shawanese, and in noisy glee returning to the New York lakes, laden
with spoils and captives; La Salle, prince of French explorers and
coureurs de bois, standing at the Falls of the Ohio, and seeking to
fathom the geographical mysteries of the continent; French and English
fur-traders, in bitter contention for the patronage of the red
man; borderers of the rival nations, shedding each other's blood in
protracted partisan wars; surveyors like Washington and Boone and the
McAfees, clad in fringed hunting-shirts and leathern leggings, mapping
out future states; hardy frontiersmen, fighting, hunting, or farming,
as occasion demanded; George Rogers Clark, descending the river with
his handful of heroic Virginians to win for the United States the
great Northwest, and for himself the laurels of fame; the Marietta
pilgrims, beating Revolutionary swords into Ohio plowshares; and all
that succeeding tide of immigrants from our own Atlantic coast
and every corner of Europe, pouring down the great valley to plant
powerful commonwealths beyond the mountains. A richly-varied panorama
of life passes before us as we contemplate the glowing story of the
Ohio.
In making our historical pilgrimage we might more easily have
"steamboated" the river,--to use a verb in local vogue; but, from the
deck of a steamer, scenes take on a different aspect than when viewed
from near the level of the flood; for a passenger by such a craft, the
vistas of a winding stream change so rapidly that he does not realize
how it seemed to the canoeist or flatboatman of old; and there are too
many modern distractions about such a mode of progress. To our minds,
the manner of our going should as nearly as possible be that of the
pioneer himself--hence our skiff, and our nightly camp in primitive
fashion.
The trip was successful, whatever the point of view. Physically, those
six weeks "Afloat on the Ohio" were a model outing--at times rough, to
be sure, but exhilarating, health-giving, brain-inspiring. The Log of
the "Pilgrim" seeks faintly to outline our experiences, but no words
can adequately describe the wooded hill-slopes which day by day girt
us in; the romantic ravines which corrugate the rim of the Ohio's
basin; the beautiful islands which stud the glistening tide; the great
affluents which, winding down for a thousand miles, from the Blue
Ridge, the Cumberland, and the Great Smoky, pour their floods into
the central stream; the giant trees--sycamores, pawpaws, cork elms,
catalpas, walnuts, and what not--which everywhere are in view in this
woodland world; the strange and lovely flowers we saw; the curious
people we met, black and white, and the varieties of dialect which
caught our ear; the details of our charming gypsy life, ashore and
afloat, during which we were conscious of the red blood tingling
through our veins, and, alert to the whisperings of Nature, were
careless of the workaday world, so far away,--simply glad to be alive.
For the better understanding of the numerous historical references
in the Log, I have thought it well to present in the Appendix a brief
sketch of the settlement of the Ohio Valley. To this Appendix, as a
preliminary reading, I invite those who may care to follow "Pilgrim"
and her crew upon their long journey from historic Redstone down to
the Father of Waters.
A selected list of Journals of previous travelers down the Ohio, has
been added, for the benefit of students of the social and economic
history of this important gateway to the continental interior.
R. G. T.
Madison, Wis., October, 1897.
AFLOAT ON THE OHIO
CHAPTER I.
On the Monongahela--The over-mountain path--Redstone Old
Fort--The Youghiogheny--Braddock's defeat.
In camp near Charleroi, Pa., Friday, May 4.--Pilgrim, built for the
glassy lakes and smooth-flowing rivers of Wisconsin, had suffered
unwonted indignities in her rough journey of a thousand miles in a
box-car. But beyond a leaky seam or two, which the Doctor had righted
with clouts and putty, and some ugly scratches which were only
paint-deep, she was in fair trim as she gracefully lay at the foot of
the Brownsville shipyard this morning and received her lading.
There were spectators in abundance. Brownsville, in the olden day, had
seen many an expedition set out from this spot for the grand tour of
the Ohio, but not in the personal recollection of any in this throng
of idlers, for the era of the flatboat and pirogue now belongs
to history. Our expedition is a revival, and therein lies
novelty. However, the historic spirit was not evident among our
visitors--railway men, coal miners loafing out the duration of a
strike, shipyard hands lying in wait for busier times, small boys
blessed with as much leisure as curiosity, and that wonder of wonders,
a bashful newspaper reporter. Their chief concern centered in the
query, how Pilgrim could hold that goodly heap of luggage and still
have room to spare for four passengers? It became evident that her
capacity is akin to that of the magician's bag.
"A dandy skiff, gents!" said the foreman of the shipyard, as we
settled into our seats--the Doctor bow, I stroke, with W---- and the
Boy in the stern sheets. Having in silence critically watched us for a
half hour, seated on a capstan, his red flannel shirt rolled up to his
elbows, and well-corded chest and throat bared to wind and weather,
this remark of the foreman was evidently the studied judgment of an
expert. It was taken as such by the good-natured crowd, which, as we
pushed off into the stream, lustily joined in a chorus of "Good-bye!"
and "Good luck to yees, an' ye don't git th' missus drowndid 'fore ye
git to Cairo!"
The current is slight on these lower reaches of the Monongahela. It
comes down gayly enough from the West Virginia hills, over many a
rapid, and through swirls and eddies in plenty, until Morgantown
is reached; and then, settling into a more sedate course, is at
Brownsville finally converted into a mere mill-pond, by the back-set
of the four slack-water dams between there and Pittsburg. This means
solid rowing for the first sixty miles of our journey, with a current
scarcely perceptible.
The thought of it suggests lunch. At the mouth of Redstone Creek, a
mile below Dunlap Creek, our port of departure, we turn in to a shaly
beach at the foot of a wooded slope, in semi-rusticity, and fortify
the inner man.
A famous spot, this Redstone Creek. Between its mouth and that of
Dunlap's was made, upon the site of extensive Indian fortification
mounds, the first English agricultural settlement west of the
Alleghanies. It is unsafe to establish dates for first discoveries,
or for first settlements. The wanderers who, first of all white men,
penetrated the fastnesses of the wilderness were mostly of the sort
who left no documentary traces behind them. It is probable, however,
that the first Redstone settlement was made as early as 1750, the
year following the establishment of the Ohio Company, which had been
chartered by the English crown and given a half-million acres of
land west of the mountains and south of the Ohio River, provided it
established thereon a hundred families within seven years.
"Redstone Old Fort"--the name had reference to the aboriginal
earthworks--played a part in the Fort Necessity and Braddock campaigns
and in later frontier wars; and, being the western terminus of the
over-mountain road known at various historic periods as Nemacolin's
Path, Braddock's Road, and Cumberland Pike, was for many years the
chief point of departure for Virginia expeditions down the Ohio River.
Washington, who had large landed interests on the Ohio, knew Redstone
well; and here George Rogers Clark set out (1778) upon flatboats, with
his rough-and-ready Virginia volunteers, to capture the country north
of the Ohio for the American arms--one of the least known, but most
momentous conquests in history.
Early in the nineteenth century, Redstone became Brownsville. But,
whether as Redstone or Brownsville, it was, in its day, like most
"jumping off" places on the edge of civilization, a veritable Sodom.
Wrote good old John Pope, in his Journal of 1790, and in the same
strain scores of other veracious chroniclers: "At this Place we were
detained about a Week, experiencing every Disgust which Rooks and
Harpies could excite." Here thrived extensive yards in which were
built flatboats, arks, keel boats, and all that miscellaneous
collection of water craft which, with their roisterly crews, were the
life of the Ohio before the introduction of steam rendered vessels of
deeper draught essential; whereupon much of the shipping business went
down the river to better stages of water, first to Pittsburg, thence
to Wheeling, and to Steubenville.
All that is of the past. Brownsville is still a busy corner of the
world, though of a different sort, with all its romance gone. To
the student of Western history, Brownsville will always be a
shrine--albeit a smoky, dusty shrine, with the smell of lubricators
and the clang of hammers, and much talk thereabout of the glories of
Mammon.
The Monongahela is a characteristic mountain trough. From an altitude
of four or five hundred feet, the country falls in sharp steeps to a
narrow alluvial bench, and then a broad beach of shale and pebble; the
slopes are broken, here and there, where deep, shadowy ravines come
winding down, bearing muddy contributions to the greater flood.
The higher hills are crowned with forest trees, the lower ofttimes
checkered with brown fields, recently planted, and rows of vines
trimmed low to stakes, as in the fashion of the Rhine. The stream,
though still majestic in its sweep, is henceforth a commercial
slack-water, lined with noisy, grimy, matter-of-fact manufacturing
towns, for the most part literally abutting one upon the other all
of the way down to Pittsburg, and fast defiling the once picturesque
banks with the gruesome offal of coal mines and iron plants.
Surprising is the density of settlement along the river. Often, four
or five full-fledged cities are at once in view from our boat, the air
is thick with sooty smoke belched from hundreds of stacks, the ear
is almost deafened with the whirr and roar and bang of milling
industries.
Tipples of bituminous coal-shafts are ever in sight--begrimed
scaffolds of wood and iron, arranged for dumping the product of the
mines into both barges and railway cars. Either bank is lined with
railways, in sight of which we shall almost continually float, all the
way down to Cairo, nearly eleven hundred miles away. At each tipple
is a miners' hamlet; a row of cottages or huts, cast in a common mold,
either unpainted, or bedaubed with that cheap, ugly red with which one
is familiar in railway bridges and rural barns. Sometimes these huts,
though in the mass dreary enough, are kept in neat repair; but often
are they sadly out of elbows--pigs and children promiscuously at
their doors, paneless sash stuffed with rags, unsightly litter strewn
around, misery stamped on every feature of the homeless tenements.
Dreariest of all is a deserted mining village, and there are
many such--the shaft having been worked out, or an unquenchable
subterranean fire left to smolder in neglect. Here the tipple has
fallen into creaking decrepitude; the cabins are without windows or
doors--these having been taken to some newer hamlet; ridge-poles are
sunken, chimneys tottering; soot covers the gaunt bones, which for all
the world are like a row of skeletons, perched high, and grinning down
at you in their misery; while the black offal of the pit, covering
deep the original beauty of the once green slope, is in its turn being
veiled with climbing weeds--such is Nature's haste, when untrammeled,
to heal the scars wrought by man.
A mile or two below Charleroi is Lock No. 4, the first of the quartet
of obstructions between Brownsville and Pittsburg. We are encamped a
mile below the dam, in a cozy little willowed nook; a rod behind
our ample tent rises the face of an alluvial terrace, occupied by a
grain-field, running back for an hundred yards to the hills, at the
base of which is a railway track. Across the river, here some two
hundred and fifty yards wide, the dark, rocky bluffs, slashed with
numerous ravines, ascend sharply from the flood; at the quarried base,
a wagon road and the customary railway; and upon the stony beach, two
or three rough shelter-tents, housing the Black Diamond Brass Band, of
Monongahela City, out on a week's picnic to while away the period of
the strike.
It was seven o'clock when we struck camp, and our frugal repast was
finished by lantern-light. The sun sets early in this narrow trough
through the foothills of the Laurel range.
* * * * *
McKeesport, Pa., Saturday, May 5th.--Out there on the beach, near
Charleroi, with the sail for an awning, Pilgrim had been converted
into a boudoir for the Doctor, who, snuggled in his sleeping-bag,
emitted an occasional snore--echoes from the Land of Nod. W---- and
our Boy of ten summers, on their canvas folding-cots, were peacefully
oblivious of the noises of the night, and needed the kiss of dawn to
rouse them. But for me, always a light sleeper, and as yet unused to
our airy bedroom, the crickets chirruped through the long watches.
Two or three freighters passed in the night, with monotonous
swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this
passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door
of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment
a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen feet in width; in quick
succession come heavy, booming waves, running at an acute angle with
the shore, breaking at once into angry foam, and wasting themselves
far up on the strand, for a few moments making bedlam with any
driftwood which chances to have made lodgment there. When suddenly
awakened by this boisterous turmoil, the first thought is that a dam
has broken and a flood is at hand; but, by the time you rise upon your
elbow, the scurrying uproar lessens, and gradually dies away along a
more distant shore.
We were slow in getting off this morning. But the dense fog had
been loath to lift; and at first the stove smoked badly, until
we discovered and removed the source of trouble. This stove is an
ingenious contrivance of the Doctor's--a box of sheet-iron, of slight
weight, so arranged as to be folded into an incredibly small space;
a vast improvement for cooking purposes over an open camp-fire, which
Pilgrim's crew know, from long experience in far distant fields, to be
a vexation to eyes and soul.
Coaling hamlets more or less deserted were frequent this
morning--unpainted, windowless, ragged wrecks. At the inhabited mining
villages, either close to the strand or well up on hillside ledges,
idle men were everywhere about. Women and boys and girls were
stockingless and shoeless, and often dirty to a degree. But,
when conversed with, we found them independent, respectful, and
self-respecting folk. Occasionally I would, for the mere sake of
meeting these workaday brothers of ours, with canteen slung on
shoulder, climb the steep flight of stairs cut in the clay bank, and
on reaching the terrace inquire for drinking water, talking familiarly
with the folk who came to meet me at the well-curb.
There are old-fashioned Dutch ovens in nearly every yard, a few
chickens, and often a shed for the cow, that is off on her daily climb
over the neighboring hills. Through the black pall of shale, a
few vegetables struggle feebly to the light; in the corners of the
palings, are hollyhocks and four-o'clocks; and, on window-sills, rows
of battered tin cans, resplendent in blue and yellow labels, are the
homes of verbenas and geraniums, in sickly bloom. Now and then, a
back door in the dreary block is distinguished by an arbored trellis
bearing a grape-vine, and furnishing for the weary housewife a shady
kitchen, _al fresco_. As a rule, however, there is little attempt to
better the homeless shelter furnished by the corporation.
We restocked with provisions at Monongahela City, a smart, newish
town, and at Elizabeth, old and dingy. It was at Elizabeth, then
Elizabethtown, that travelers from the Eastern States, over the old
Philadelphia Road, chiefly took boat for the Ohio--the Virginians
still clinging to Redstone, as the terminus of the Braddock Road.
Elizabethtown, in flatboat days, was the seat of a considerable
boat-building industry, its yards in time turning out steamboats for
the New Orleans trade, and even sea-going sailing craft; but, to-day,
coal barges are the principal output of her decaying shipyards.
By this time, the duties of our little ship's company are well
defined. W---- supervises the cuisine, most important of all offices;
the Doctor is chief navigator, assistant cook, and hewer of wood; it
falls to my lot to purchase supplies, to be carrier of water, to pitch
tent and make beds, and, while breakfast is being cooked, to dismantle
the camp and, so far as may be, to repack Pilgrim; the Boy collects
driftwood, wipes dishes, and helps at what he can--while all hands row
or paddle through the livelong day, as whim or need dictates.
Lock No. 3, at Walton, necessitated a portage of the load, over the
left bank. It is a steep, rocky climb, and the descent on the lower
side, strewn with stone chips, destructive to shoe-leather. The Doctor
and I let Pilgrim herself down with a long rope, over a shallow spot
in the apron of the dam.
At six o'clock a camping-ground for the night became desirable. We
were fortunate, last evening, to find a bit of rustic country in which
to pitch our tent; but all through this afternoon both banks of the
river were lined with village after village, city after city, scarcely
a garden patch between them--Wilson, Coal Valley, Lostock, Glassport,
Dravosburg, and a dozen others not recorded on our map, which bears
date of 1882. The sun was setting behind the rim of the river
basin, when we reached the broad mouth of the Youghiogheny (pr.
Yock-i-o-gai'-ny), which is implanted with a cluster of iron-mill
towns, of which McKeesport is the center. So far as we could see down
the Monongahela, the air was thick with the smoke of glowing chimneys,
and the pulsating whang of steel-making plants and rolling-mills made
the air tremble. The view up the "Yough" was more inviting; so, with
oars and paddle firmly set, we turned off our course and lustily
pulled against the strong current of the tributary. A score or two of
house-boats lay tied to the McKeesport shore or were bolstered high
upon the beach; a fleet of Yough steamers had their noses to the
wharf; a half-dozen fishermen were setting nets; and, high over all,
with lofty spans of iron cobweb, several railway and wagon bridges
spanned the gliding stream.
It was a mile and a half up the Yough before we reached the open
country; and then only the rapidly-gathering dusk drove us ashore, for
on near approach the prospect was not pleasing. Finally settling into
this damp, shallow pocket in the shelving bank, we find broad-girthed
elms and maples screening us from all save the river front, the high
bank in the rear fringed with blue violets which emit a delicious
odor, backed by a field of waving corn stretching off toward
heavily-wooded hills. Our supper cooked and eaten by lantern-light,
we vote ourselves as, after all, serenely content out here in the
starlight--at peace with the world, and very close to Nature's heart.
There come to us, on the cool evening breeze, faint echoes of the
never-ceasing clang of McKeesport iron mills, down on the Monongahela
shore. But it is not of these we talk, lounging in the welcome warmth
of the camp-fire; it is of the age of romance, a hundred and forty odd
years ago, when Major Washington and Christopher Gist, with famished
horses, floundered in the ice hereabout, upon their famous midwinter
trip to Fort Le Boeuf; when the "Forks of the Yough" became the
extreme outpost of Western advance, with all the accompanying horrors
of frontier war; and later, when McKeesport for a time rivaled
Redstone and Elizabethtown as a center for boat-building and a point
of departure for the Ohio.
* * * * *
Pittsburg, Sunday, May 6th.--Many of the trees are already in full
leaf. The trillium is fading. We are in the full tide of early
summer, up here in the mountains, and our long journey of six weeks
is southward and toward the plain. The lower Ohio may soon be a
bake-oven, and the middle of June will be upon us before far-away
Cairo is reached. It behooves us to be up and doing. The river,
flowing by our door, is an ever-pressing invitation to be onward; it
stops not for Sunday, nor ever stops--and why should we, mere drift
upon the passing tide?
There was a smart thunder-shower during breakfast, followed by a cool,
cloudy morning. At eleven o'clock Pilgrim was laden. A south-eastern
breeze ruffled the waters of the Yough, and for the first time the
Doctor ordered up the sail, with W---- at the sheet. It was not long
before Pilgrim had the water "singing at her prow." With a rush, we
flew past the factories, the house-boats, and the shabby street-ends
of McKeesport, out into the Monongahela, where, luckily, the wind
still held.
At McKeesport, the hills on the right are of a relatively low
altitude, smooth and well rounded. It was here that Braddock, in his
slow progress toward Fort Duquesne, first crossed the Monongahela,
to the wide, level bottom on the left bank. He had found the inner
country to the right of the river and below the Yough too rough and
hilly for his march, hence had turned back toward the Monongahela,
fording the river to take advantage of the less difficult bottom. Some
four miles below this first crossing, hills reapproach the left
bank, till the bottom ceases; the right thenceforth becomes the
more favorable side for marching. With great pomp, he recrossed the
Monongahela just below the point where Turtle Creek enters from
the east. Within a hillside ravine, but a hundred yards inland,
the brilliant column fell into an ambuscade of Indians and French
half-breeds, suffering that heart-sickening defeat which will ever
live as one of the most tragic events in American history.
The noisy iron-manufacturing town of Braddock now occupies the site of
Braddock's defeat. Not far from the old ford stretches the great
dam of Lock No. 2, which we portaged, with the usual difficulties of
steep, stony banks. Braddock is but eight miles across country from
Pittsburg, although twelve by river. We have, all the way down, an
almost constant succession of iron and steel-making towns, chief among
them Homestead, on the left bank, seven miles above Pittsburg. The
great strike of July, 1892, with its attendant horrors, is a lurid
chapter in the story of American industry. With shuddering interest,
we view the famous great bank of ugly slag at the base of the steel
mills, where the barges housing the Pinkerton guards were burned by
the mob.
To-day, the Homesteaders are enjoying their Sunday afternoon outing
along the town shore--nurses pushing baby carriages, self-absorbed
lovers holding hands upon riverside benches, merry-makers rowing in
skiffs or crossing the river in crowded ferries; the electric cars,
following either side of the stream as far down as Pittsburg, crowded
to suffocation with gayly-attired folk. They look little like rioters;
yet it seems but the other day when Homestead men and women and
children were hysterically reveling in atrocities akin to those of the
Paris commune.
Approaching Pittsburg, the high steeps are everywhere crowded with
houses--great masses of smoke-color, dotted all over with white shades
and sparkling windows, which seem, in the gray afternoon, to be ten
thousand eyes coldly staring down at Pilgrim and her crew from all
over the flanking hillsides.
Lock No. 1, the last barrier between us and the Ohio, is a mile or two
up the Monongahela, with warehouses and manufacturing plants closely
hemming it in on either side. A portage, unaided, appears to be
impossible here, and we resolve to lock through. But it is Sunday, and
the lock is closed. Above, a dozen down-going steamboats are moored to
the shore, waiting for midnight and the resumption of business; while
below, a similar line of ascending boats is awaiting the close of the
day of rest. Pilgrim, however, cannot hang up at the levee with any
comfort to her crew; it is necessary, with evening at hand, and a
thunder-storm angrily rising over the Pittsburg hills, to get out
of this grimy pool, flanked about with iron and coal yards, chimney
stacks, and a forest of shipping, and to quickly seek the open country
lower down on the Ohio. The lock-keepers appreciated our situation.
Two or three sturdy, courteous men helped us carry our cargo, by an
intricate official route, over coils of rope and chains, over lines of
shafting, and along dizzy walks overhanging the yawning basin; while
the Doctor, directed to a certain chute in midstream, took unladen
Pilgrim over the great dam, with a wild swoop which made our eyes swim
to witness from the lock.
We had laboriously been rowing on slack-water, all the way from
Brownsville, with the help of an hour's sail this morning; whereas,
now that we were in the strong current below the dam, we had but to
gently paddle to glide swiftly on our way. A hundred steamers, more or
less, lay closely packed with their bows upon the right, or principal
city wharf. It was raining at last, and we donned our storm wraps. No
doubt yellow Pilgrim,--thought hereabout to be a frail craft for these
waters,--her crew all poncho-clad, slipping silently through the dark
water swishing at their sterns, was a novelty to the steamboat men,
for they leaned lazily over their railings, the officers on the
upper deck, engineers and roustabouts on the lower, and watched us
curiously.
Our period of elation was brief. Black storm-clouds, jagged and
portentous, were scurrying across the sky; and by the time we had
reached the forks, where the Monongahela, in the heart of the city,
joins forces with the Alleghany, Pilgrim was being buffeted about on
a chop sea produced by cross currents and a northwest gale. She can
weather an ordinary storm, but this experience was too much for her.
When a passing steamer threw out long lines of frothy waves to add
to the disturbance, they broke over our gunwales; and W---- with the
coffee pot and the Boy with a tin basin were hard pushed to keep the
water below the thwarts.
Seeking the friendly shelter of a house-boat, of which there were
scores tied to the left bank, we trusted our drenched luggage to the
care of its proprietor, placed Pilgrim in a snug harbor hard by, and,
hurrying up a steep flight of steps leading from the levee to the
terrace above, found a suburban hotel just as its office clock struck
eight.
Across the Ohio, through the blinding storm, the dark outlines of
Pittsburg and Allegheny City are spangled with electric lamps which
throw toward us long, shimmering lances of light, in which the mighty
stream, gray, mysterious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging onward
with majestic sweep. Upon its bosom we are to be borne for a thousand
miles. Our introduction has been unpropitious; it is to be hoped
that on further acquaintance we may be better pleased with La Belle
Riviere.