Houseboat life--Decadence of steamboat traffic--Wheeling, and
Wheeling Creek.
Above Moundsville, W. Va., Thursday, May 10th.--Our friends saw us
off at the gravelly beach just below the "works." There was a slight
breeze ahead, but the atmosphere was agreeable, and Pilgrim bore a
happy crew, now as brown as gypsies; the first painful effects of
sunburn are over, and we are hardened in skin and muscle to any
vicissitudes which are likely to be met upon our voyage. Rough
weather, river mud, and all the other exigencies of a moving camp,
are beginning to tell upon clothing; we are becoming like gypsies in
raiment, as well as color. But what a soul-satisfying life is this
gypsying! We possess the world, while afloat on the Ohio!
There are, in the course of the summer, so many sorts of people
traveling by the river,--steamboat passengers, campers, fishers,
house-boat folk, and what not,--that we attract little attention of
ourselves, but Pilgrim is indeed a curiosity hereabout. What remarks
we overhear are about her,--"Honey skiff, that!" "Right smart skiff!"
"Good skiff for her place, but no good for this yere river!" and
so on. She is a lap-streak, square-sterned craft, of white cedar
three-eighths of an inch thick; fifteen feet in length and four of
beam; weighs just a hundred pounds; comfortably holds us and our
luggage, with plenty of spare room to move about in; is easily
propelled, and as stanch as can be made. Upon these waters, we meet
nothing like her. Not counting the curious floating boxes and punts,
which are knocked together out of driftwood, by boys and poor whites,
and are numerous all along shore, the regulation Ohio river skiff is
built on graceful lines, but of inch boards, heavily ribbed, and is a
sorry weight to handle. The contention is, that to withstand the swash
of steamboat wakes breaking upon the shore, and the rush of drift in
times of flood, a heavy skiff is necessary; there is a tendency
to decry Pilgrim as a plaything, unadapted to the great river. A
reasonable degree of care at all times, however, and keeping the boat
drawn high on the beach when not in use,--such care as we are familiar
with upon our Wisconsin inland lakes,--would render the employment of
such as she quite practicable, and greatly lessen the labor of rowing
on this waterway.
The houseboats, dozens of which we see daily, interest us greatly.
They are scows, or "flats," greatly differing in size, with
low-ceilinged cabins built upon them--sometimes of one room, sometimes
of half a dozen, and varying in character from a mere shanty to a
well-appointed cottage. Perhaps the greater number of these craft are
afloat in the river, and moored to the bank, with a gang-plank running
to shore; others are "beached," having found a comfortable nook in
some higher stage of water, and been fastened there, propped level
with timbers and driftwood. Among the houseboat folk are young working
couples starting out in life, and hoping ultimately to gain a foothold
on land; unfortunate people, who are making a fresh start; men
regularly employed in riverside factories and mills; invalids, who, at
small expense, are trying the fresh-air cure; others, who drift up and
down the Ohio, seeking casual work; and legitimate fishermen, who find
it convenient to be near their nets, and to move about according to
the needs of their calling. But a goodly proportion of these boats are
inhabited by the lowest class of the population,--poor "crackers" who
have managed to scrape together enough money to buy, or enough energy
and driftwood to build, such a craft; and, near or at the towns, many
are occupied by gamblers, illicit liquor dealers, and others who,
while plying nefarious trades, make a pretense of following the
occupation of the Apostles.
Houseboat people, whether beached or afloat, pay no rent, and
heretofore have paid no taxes. Kentucky has recently passed, more as
a police regulation than as a means of revenue, an act levying a State
tax of twenty-five dollars upon each craft of this character; and the
other commonwealths abutting upon the river are considering the policy
of doing likewise. The houseboat men have, however, recently formed
a protective association, and propose to fight the new laws on
constitutional grounds, the contention being that the Ohio is a
national highway, and that commerce upon it cannot be hampered by
State taxes. This view does not, however, affect the taxability of
"beached" boats, which are clearly squatters on State soil.
Both in town and country, the riffraff of the houseboat element are in
disfavor. It is not uncommon for them, beached or tied up, to remain
unmolested in one spot for years, with their pigs, chickens, and
little garden patch about them, mayhap a swarm or two of bees, and
a cow enjoying free pasturage along the weedy bank or on neighboring
hills. Occasionally, however, as the result of spasmodic local
agitation, they are by wholesale ordered to betake themselves to
some more hospitable shore; and not a few farmers, like our friend at
Beaver River, are quick to pattern after the city police, and order
their visitors to move on the moment they seek a mooring. For the
truth is, the majority of those who "live on the river," as the phrase
goes, have the reputation of being pilferers; farmers tell sad tales
of despoiled chicken-roosts and vegetable gardens. From fishing,
shooting, collecting chance driftwood, and leading a desultory life
along shore, like the wreckers of old they naturally fall into this
thieving habit. Having neither rent nor taxes to pay, and for the most
part not voting, and having no share in the political or social life
of landsmen, they are in the State, yet not of it,--a class unto
themselves, whose condition is well worthy the study of economists.
Interspersed with the houseboat folk, although of different character,
are those whose business leads them to dwell as nomads upon the
river--merchant peddlers, who spend a day or two at some rustic
landing, while scouring the neighborhood for oil-barrels and junk,
which they load in great heaps upon the flat roofs of their
cabins, giving therefor, at goodly prices, groceries, crockery, and
notions,--often bartering their wares for eggs and dairy products, to
be disposed of to passing steamers, whose clerks in turn "pack" them
for the largest market on their route; blacksmiths, who moor their
floating shops to country beach or village levee, wherever business
can be had; floating theaters and opera companies, with large barges
built as play-houses, towed from town to town by their gaudily-painted
tugs, on which may occasionally be perched the vociferous "steam
piano" of our circus days, "whose soul-stirring music can be heard
for four miles;" traveling sawyers, with old steamboats made over into
sawmills, employed by farmers to "work up" into lumber such logs as
they can from time to time bring down to the shore--the product
being oftenest used in the neighborhood, but occasionally rafted,
and floated to the nearest large town; and a miscellaneous lot
of traveling craftsmen who live and work afloat,--chairmakers,
upholsterers, feather and mattress renovators, photographers,--who
land at the villages, scatter abroad their advertising cards, and stay
so long as the ensuing patronage warrants.
A motley assortment, these neighbors of ours, an uncultivated field
for the fiction writers. We have struck up acquaintance with many of
them, and they are not bad fellows, as the world goes. Philosophers
all, and loquacious to a degree. But they cannot, for the life of
them, fathom the mystery of our cruise. We are not in trade? we are
not fishing? we are not canvassers? we are not show-people? "What 'n
'tarnation air ye, anny way? Oh, come now! No fellers is do'n' th'
river fur fun, that's sartin--ye're jist gov'm'nt agints! That's my
way o' think'n'. Well, 'f ye kin find fun in 't, then done go ahead,
I say! But all same, we'll be friends, won't we? Yew bet strangers!
Ye're welcome t' all in this yere shanty boat--ain't no bakky 'bout
yer close, yew fellers?" We meet with abundant courtesy of this rude
sort, and weaponless sleep well o' nights, fearing naught from our
comrades for the nonce.
We again have railways on either bank. The iron horse has almost
eclipsed the "fire canoe," as the Indians picturesquely styled the
steamboat. We occasionally see boats tied up to the wharves, evidently
not in commission; but, in actual operation, we seldom meet or pass
over one or two daily. To be sure, the low stage of water,--from
six to eight feet thus far, and falling daily,--and the coal strike,
militate against navigation interests. But the truth is, there is very
little business now left for steamboats, beyond the movement of coal,
stone, bricks, and other bulky material, some way freight, and a light
passenger traffic. The railroads are quicker and surer, and of course
competition lowers the charges.
The heavy manufacturing interests along the river now depend little
upon the steamers, although originally established here because of
them. I asked our friend, the superintendent at Mingo, what advantage
was gained by having his plant upon the river. He replied: "We can
get all the water we want, and we use a great deal of it; and it is
convenient to empty our slag upon the banks; but our chief interest
here is in the fact that Mingo is a railway junction." By rail he gets
his coal and ore, and ships away his product. Were the coal to come a
considerable distance, the river would be the cheaper road; but it is
obtained from neighboring hill mines that are practically owned by the
railways. This coal, by the way, costs $1.10 at the shaft mouth, and
$1.75 landed at the Mingo works. As for the sewer-pipe, brick, and
pottery works, they are along stream because of the great beds of clay
exposed by the erosion of the river.
It is fortunate for the stability of these towns, that the Ohio flows
along the transcontinental pathway westward, so that the great railway
lines may serve them without deflection from their natural course. Had
the great stream flowed south instead of west, the industries of the
valley doubtless would gradually have been removed to the transverse
highways of the new commerce, save where these latter crossed the
river, and thus have left scores of once thriving communities mere
'longshore wrecks of their former selves. This is not possible, now.
The steamboat traffic may still further waste, until the river is no
longer serviceable save as a continental drainage ditch; but, chiefly
because of its railways, the Ohio Valley will continue to be the seat
of an industrial population which shall wax fat upon the growth of the
nation's needs.
By the middle of the afternoon, we were at Wheeling (91 miles). The
town has fifty thousand inhabitants, is substantially built, of a
distinctly Southern aspect; well stretched out along the river,
but narrow; with gaunt, treeless, gully-washed hills of clay rising
abruptly behind, giving the place a most forbidding appearance from
the water. There are several fine bridges spanning the Ohio; and
Wheeling Creek, which empties on the lower edge of town, is crossed by
a maze of steel spans and stone arches; the well-paved wharf, sloping
upward from the Ohio, is nearly as broad and imposing as that of
Pittsburg;[A] houseboats are here by the score, some of them the
haunts of fishing clubs, as we judge from the names emblazoned on
their sides--"Mystic Crew," "South Side Club," and the like.
For the first time upon our tour, negroes are abundant upon the
streets and lounging along the river front. They vary in color from
yellow to inky blackness, and in raiment from the "dude," smart
in straw hat, collars and cuffs, and white-frilled shirt with
glass-diamond pin, to the steamboat roustabout, all slouch and rags,
and evil-eyed.
Wheeling Island (300 acres), up to thirty years ago mentioned in
travelers' journals as a rare beauty-spot, is to-day thick-set with
cottages of factory hands and small villas, and commonplace;
while smoky Bridgeport, opposite on the Ohio side, was from our
vantage-point a mere smudge upon the landscape.
Wheeling Creek is famous in Western history. The three Zane brothers,
Ebenezer, Jonathan and Silas,--typical, old-fashioned names these,
bespeaking the God-fearing, Bible-loving, Scotch-Presbyterian
stock from which sprang so large a proportion of trans-Alleghany
pioneers,--explored this region as early as 1769, built cabins, and
made improvements--Silas at the forks of the creek, and Ebenezer and
Jonathan at the mouth. During three or four years, it was a hard fight
between them and the Indians; but, though several times driven from
the scene, the Zane brothers stubbornly reappeared, and rebuilt their
burned habitations.
Before the Revolutionary War broke out, the fortified home of the
Zanes, at the creek mouth, was a favorite stopping stage in the
savage-haunted wilderness; and many a traveler in those early days has
left us in his journal a thankful account of his tarrying here. The
Zane stockade developed into Fort Fincastle, in Lord Dunmore's time;
then, Fort Henry, during the Revolution; and everyone who knows his
Western history at all has read of the three famous sieges of Wheeling
(1777, 1781, and 1782), and the daring deeds of its men and women,
which help illumine the pages of border annals. Finally, by 1784, the
fort at Wheeling, that had never surrendered, was demolished as no
longer necessary, for the wall of savage resistance was now pushed far
westward. Wheeling had become the western end of a wagon road across
the Panhandle, from Redstone, and here were fitted out many flatboat
expeditions for the lower Ohio; later, in steamboat days, the shallow
water of the upper river caused Wheeling to be in midsummer the
highest port attainable; and to this day it holds its ground as the
upper terminus of several steamboat lines.
Below Wheeling are several miles of factory towns nestled by the
strand, and numerous coal tipples, with their begrimed villages.
Fishermen have been frequent to-day, in houseboats of high and low
degree, and in land camps composed of tents and board shanties, with
rows of seines and tarred pound-nets stretched in the sun to dry;
tow-headed children abound, almost as nude as the pigs and dogs
and chickens amongst which they waddle and roll; women-folk busy
themselves with the multifarious cares of home-keeping, while their
lords are in shady nooks mending nets, or listlessly examining trout
lines which appear to yield but empty hooks; they tell us that when
the river is falling, fish bite not, and yet they serenely angle on,
dreaming their lives away.
A half mile above Big Grave Creek (101 miles), we, too, hurry into
camp on a shelving bank of sand, deep-fringed with willows; for over
the western hills thunder-clouds are rising, with wind gusts. Level
fields stretch back of us for a quarter of a mile, to the hills which
bound the bottom; at our front door majestically rolls the growing
river, perhaps a third of a mile in width, black with the reflection
of the sky, and wrinkled now and then with squalls which scurry over
its bubbling surface.[B]
The storm does not break, but the bending tree-tops crone, and toads
innumerable rend the air with their screaming whistles. We had great
ado, during the cooking of dinner, to prevent them from hopping into
our little stove, as it gleamed brightly in the early dusk; and have
adopted special precautions to keep them from the tent, as they jump
about in the tall grass, appeasing their insectivorous appetites.
[Footnote A: Upon the Ohio and kindred rivers, the term "wharf"
applies to the river beach when graded and paved, ready for the
reception of steamers. Such a wharf must not be confounded with a lake
or seaside wharf, a staging projected into the water.]
[Footnote B: It was in this neighborhood, a mile or two above our
camp, where the bottom is narrower, that Capt. William Foreman and
twenty other Virginia militiamen were killed in an Indian ambuscade,
Sept. 27, 1777. An inscribed stone monument was erected on the spot in
1835, but we could not find it.]