Shingis Old Town--The dynamiter--Yellow Creek.
Kneistley's Cluster, W. Va., Tuesday, May 8th.--We were off at a
quarter past seven, and among the earliest shoppers in Rochester, on
the east bank of the Beaver, where supplies were laid in for the day.
This busy, prosperous-looking place bears little resemblance to the
squalid Indian village which Gist found here in November, 1750. It was
then the seat of Barney Curran, an Indian trader--the same Curran whom
Washington, three years later, employed in the mission to Venango. But
the smaller sister town of Beaver, on the lower side of the mouth,--or
rather the western outskirts of Beaver a mile below the mouth,--has
the most ancient history. On account of a ford across the Beaver,
about where is now a slack-water dam, the neighborhood became of
early importance to the French as a fur-trading center. With customary
liberality toward the Indians, whom they assiduously cultivated, the
French, in 1756, built for them, on this site, a substantial town,
which the English indifferently called Sarikonk, Sohkon, King Beaver's
Town, or Shingis Old Town. During the French and Indian War, the place
was prominent as a rendezvous for the enemies of American borderers;
numerous bloody forays were planned here, and hither were brought to
be adopted into the tribes, or to be cruelly tortured, according to
savage whim, many of the captives whose tales have made lurid the
history of the Ohio Valley.
Passing Beaver River, the Ohio enters upon its grand sweep to the
southwest. The wide uplands at once become more rustic, especially
those of the left bank, which no longer is threaded by a railway, as
heretofore all the way from Brownsville. The two ranges of undulating
hills, some three hundred and fifty feet high, forming the rim of the
basin, are about a half mile apart; while the river itself is perhaps
a third of a mile in width, leaving narrow bottoms on alternate sides,
as the stream in gentle curves rebounds from the rocky base of one
hill to that of another. When winding about such a base, there is at
this stage of the water a sloping, stony beach, some ten to twenty
yards in width, from which ascends the sharp steep, for the most part
heavily tree-clad--maples, birches, elms and oaks of goodly girth, the
latter as yet in but half-leaf. On the "bottom side" of the river, the
alluvial terrace presents a sheer wall of clay rising from eight to a
dozen feet above the beach, which is often thick-grown with willows,
whose roots hold the soil from becoming too easy a prey to the
encroaching current. Sycamores now begin to appear in the bottoms,
although of less size than we shall meet below. Sometimes the little
towns we see occupy a narrow and more or less rocky bench upon the
hill side of the stream, but settlement is chiefly found upon the
bottoms.
Shippingsport (32 miles), on the left bank, where we stopped this noon
for eggs, butter, and fresh water, is on a narrow hill bench--a dry,
woe-begone hamlet, side-tracked from the path of the world's progress.
While I was on shore, negotiating with the sleepy storekeeper, Pilgrim
and her crew waited alongside the flatboat which serves as the town
ferry. There they were visited by a breezy, red-faced young man, in a
blue flannel shirt and a black slouch hat, who was soon enough at his
ease to lie flat upon the ferry gunwale, his cheeks supported by his
hands, and talk to W---- and the Doctor as if they were old friends.
He was a dealer in nitroglycerin cartridges, he said, and pointed to a
long, rakish-looking skiff hard by, which bore a red flag at its
prow. "Ye see that? Thet there red flag? Well, thet's the law on us
glyser_een_ fellers--over five hundred poun's, two flags; un'er five
hundred, one flag. I've two hundred and fifty, I have. I tell yer th'
steamboats steer clear o' me, an' don' yer fergit it, neither; they
jist give me a wide berth, they do, yew bet! 'n' th' railroads, they
don' carry no glyser_een_ cartridge, they don't--all uv it by skiff,
like yer see me goin'."
These cartridges, he explained, are dropped into oil or gas wells
whose owners are desirous of accelerating the flow. The cartridge, in
exploding, enlarges the hole, and often the output of the well is at
once increased by several hundred per cent. The young fellow had the
air of a self-confident rustic, with little experience in the world.
Indeed, it seemed from his elated manner as if this might be his
first trip from home, and the blowing of oil wells an incidental
speculation. The Boy, quick at inventive nomenclature, and fresh
from a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson, called our visitor "the
Dynamiter," and by that title I suppose we shall always remember him.
The Dynamiter confided to his listeners that he was going down the
river for "a clean hundred miles, and that's right smart fur, ain't
it? How fur down be yees goin'?" The Doctor replied that we were going
nine hundred; whereat the man of explosives gave vent to his feelings
in a prolonged whistle, then a horse laugh, and "Oh come, now! Don'
be givin' us taffy! Say, hones' Injun, how fur down air yew fellers
goin', anyhow?" It was with some difficulty that he could comprehend
the fact. A hundred miles on the river was a great outing for this
village lad; nine hundred was rather beyond his comprehension,
although he finally compromised by "allowing" that we might be going
as far as Cincinnati. Wouldn't the Doctor go into partnership with
him? He had no caps for his cartridges, and if the Doctor would buy
caps and "stan' in with him on the cost of the glyser_een_," they
would, regardless of Ohio statutes, blow up the fish in unfrequented
portions of the river, and make two hundred dollars apiece by carrying
the spoils in to Wheeling. The Doctor, as a law-abiding citizen,
good-naturedly declined; and upon my return to the flat, the Dynamiter
was handing the Boy a huge stick of barber-pole candy, saying, "Well,
yew fellers, we'll part friends, anyhow--but sorry yew won't go in on
this spec'; there's right smart money in 't, 'n' don' yer fergit it!"
By the middle of the afternoon we reached the boundary line (40 miles)
between Pennsylvania on the east and Ohio and West Virginia on the
west. The last Pennsylvania settlements are a half mile above the
boundary--Smith's Ferry (right), an old and somewhat decayed village,
on a broad, low bottom at the mouth of the picturesque Little Beaver
Creek;[A] and Georgetown (left), a prosperous-looking, sedate town,
with tidy lawns running down to the edge of the terrace, below which
is a shelving stone beach of generous width. Two high iron towers
supporting the cable of a current ferry add dignity to the twin
settlements. A stone monument, six feet high, just observable through
the willows on the right shore, marks the boundary; while upon the
left bank, surmounting a high, rock-strewn beach, is the dilapidated
frame house of a West Virginia "cracker," through whose garden-patch
the line takes its way, unobserved and unthought of by pigs, chickens
and children, which in hopeless promiscuity swarm the interstate
premises.
For many days to come we are to have Ohio on the right bank and West
Virginia on the left. There is no perceptible change, of course, in
the contour of the rugged hills which hem us in; yet somehow it stirs
the blood to reflect that quite within the recollection of all of
us in Pilgrim's crew, save the Boy, that left bank was the house of
bondage, and that right the land of freedom, and this river of ours
the highway between.
East Liverpool (44 miles) and Wellsville (48 miles) are long stretches
of pottery and tile-making works, both of them on the Ohio shore.
There is nothing there to lure us, however, and we determined to camp
on the banks of Yellow Creek (51 miles), a peaceful little Ohio stream
some two rods in width, its mouth crossed by two great iron spans, for
railway and highway. But although Yellow Creek winds most gracefully
and is altogether a charming bit of rustic water, deep-set amid
picturesque slopes of field and wood, we fail to find upon its banks
an appropriate camping-place. Upon one side a country road closely
skirts the shore, and on the other a railway, while for the mile or
more we pushed along small farmsteads almost abutted. Hence we retrace
our path to the great river, and, dropping down-stream for two miles,
find what we seek upon the lower end of the chief of Kneistly's
Cluster--two islands on the West Virginia side of the channel.
It is storied ground, this neighborhood of ours. Over there at the
mouth of Yellow Creek was, a hundred and twenty years ago, the camp of
Logan, the Mingo chief; opposite, on the West Virginia shore, Baker's
Bottom, where occurred the treacherous massacre of Logan's family. The
tragedy is interwoven with the history of the trans-Alleghany border;
and schoolboys have in many lands and tongues recited the pathetic
defense of the poor Mingo, who, more sinned against than sinning, was
crushed in the inevitable struggle between savagery and civilization.
"Who is there to mourn for Logan?"
We are high and dry on our willowed island. Above, just out of sight,
are moored a brace of steam pile-drivers engaged in strengthening
the dam which unites us with Baker's Bottom. To the left lies a broad
stretch of gravel strand, beyond which is the narrow water fed by the
overflow of the dam; to the right, the broad steamboat channel rolls
between us and the Ohio hills, while the far-reaching vista downstream
is a feast of shade and tint, by land and water, with the lights and
smoke of New Cumberland and Sloan's Station faintly discernible near
the horizon. All about us lies a beautiful world of woodland.
The whistle of quails innumerable broke upon us in the twilight,
succeeding to the calls of rose-breasted grosbeaks and a goodly
company of daylight followers; in this darkening hour, the low,
plaintive note of the whip-poor-will is heard on every hand, now
and then interrupted by the hoarse bark of owls. There is a gentle
tinkling of cowbells on the Ohio shore, and on both are human voices
confused by distance. All pervading is the deep, sullen roar of a
great wing-dam, a half mile or so down-stream.
The camp is gypsy-like. Our washing lies spread on bushes, where it
will catch the first peep of morning sun. Perishable provisions rest
in notches of trees, where the cool evening breeze will strike them.
Seated upon the "grub" box, I am writing up our log by aid of the
lantern hung from a branch overhead, while W----, ever busy, sits by
with her mending. Lying in the moonlight, which through the sprawling
willows gayly checkers our sand bank, the Doctor and the Boy are
discussing the doings of Br'er Rabbit--for we are in the Southland
now, and may any day meet good Uncle Remus.
[Footnote A: On this creek was the hunting-cabin of the Seneca (Mingo)
chief, Half King, who sent a message of welcome to Washington, when
the latter was on his way to Great Meadows (1754).]