Life ashore and afloat--Marietta, "the Plymouth Rock of the
West"--The Little Kanawha--The story of Blennerhassett's
Island.
Blennerhassett's Island, Sunday, May 13th.--The day broke without fog,
at our camp on the rocky steep above Marietta. The eastern sky was
veiled with summer clouds, all gayly flushed by the rising sun, and
in the serene silence of the morning there hung the scent of dew, and
earth, and trees. In the east, the distant edges of the West Virginia
hills were aglow with the mounting light before it had yet peeped over
into the river trough, where a silvery haze lent peculiar charm to
flood and bank. Up river, one of the Three Brothers isles, dark and
heavily forested, seemed in the middle ground to float on air. A
bewitching picture this, until at last the sun sprang clear and strong
above the fringing hills, and the spell was broken.
The steamboat traffic is improving as we get lower down. Last evening,
between landing and bedtime, a half dozen passed us, up and down,
breathing heavily as dragons might, and leaving behind them foamy
wakes which loudly broke upon the shore. Before morning, I was at
intervals awakened by as many more. A striking spectacle, the passage
of a big river steamer in the night; you hear, fast approaching, a
labored pant; suddenly, around the bend, or emerging from behind an
island, the long white monster glides into view, lanterns gleaming on
two lines of deck, her electric searchlight uneasily flitting to and
fro, first on one landmark, then on another, her engine bell sharply
clanging, the measured pant developing into a burly, all-pervading
roar, which gradually declines into a pant again--and then she
disappears as she came, her swelling wake rudely ruffling the moonlit
stream.
We caught up with a large lumber raft this morning, descending from
Pittsburg to Cincinnati. The half-dozen men in charge were housed
midway in a rude little shanty, and relieved each other at the
sweeps--two at bow, and two astern. It is an easy, lounging life, most
of the way, with some difficulties in the shallows, and in passing
beneath the great bridges. They travel night and day, except in the
not infrequent wind-storms blowing up stream; and it will take them
another week to cover the three hundred miles between this and their
destination. Far different fellows, these commonplace raftsmen of
to-day, from the "lumber boys" of a half-century or more ago, when the
river towns were regularly "painted red" by the men who followed the
Ohio by raft or flatboat. Life along shore was then more picturesque
than comfortable.
Later, we stopped on the Ohio shore to chat with a group of farmers
having a Sunday talk, their seat a drift log, in the shade of
a willowed bank. They proved to be market gardeners and
fruit-growers--well-to-do men of their class, and intelligent in
conversation; all of them descendants of the sturdy New Englanders who
settled these parts.
While the others were discussing small fruits with these transplanted
Yankees, who proved quite as full of curiosity about us as we
concerning them, I went down shore a hundred yards, struggling through
the dense fringe of willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting
off into the stream. The two rough-bearded, merry-eyed fellows at the
sweeps were setting their craft broadside to the stream--that "the
current might have more holt of her," the chief explained. They were
interested in the kodak, and readily posed as I wished, but wanted to
see what had been taken, having the common notion that it is like
a tintype camera, with results at once attainable. They offered our
party a ride for the rest of the day, if we would row alongside and
come aboard, but I thanked them, saying their craft was too slow for
our needs; at which they laughed heartily, and "'lowed" we might be
traders, too, anxious to get in ahead of them--"but there's plenty o'
room o' th' river, for yew an' we, stranger! Well, good luck to yees!
We'll see yer down below, somewhar, I reckon!"
Just before lunch, we were at Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum
(171 miles), a fine stream, here two hundred and fifty yards wide. A
storied river, this Muskingum. We first definitely hear of it in 1748,
the year the original Ohio Company was formed. Celoron was here the
year following, with his little band of French soldiers and Indians,
vainly endeavoring to turn English traders out of the Ohio Valley.
Christopher Gist came, some months later; then the trader Croghan,
for "Old Wyandot Town," the Indian village at the mouth, was a noted
center in Western forest traffic. Moravian missionaries appeared in
due time, establishing on the banks of the Muskingum the ill-fated
convert villages of Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhuetten, and Salem. In 1785, Fort
Harmar was reared on the site of Wyandot Town. Lastly, in the early
spring of 1788, came, in Ohio river flatboats, that famous body of
New England veterans of the Revolution, under Gen. Rufus Putnam, and
planted Marietta--"the Plymouth Rock of the West."
We smile at these Ohio pilgrims, for dignifying the hills which girt
in the Marietta bottom, with the names of the seven on which Rome is
said to be built--for having a Campus Martius and a Sacra Via, and all
that, out here among the sycamore stumps and the wild Indians. But a
classical revival was just then vigorously affecting American thought,
and it would have been strange if these sturdy New Englanders had not
felt its influence, fresh as they were from out the shadows of Harvard
and Yale, and in the awesome presence of crowds of huge monumental
earthworks, whose age, in their day, was believed to far outdate
the foundations of the Eternal City itself. They loved learning
for learning's sake; and here, in the log-cabins of Marietta, eight
hundred miles west of their beloved Boston, among many another good
thing they did for posterity, they established the principle of public
education at public cost, as a national principle.
They were soldier colonists. Washington, out of a full heart, for he
dearly loved the West, said of them: "No colony in America was ever
settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced
at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its
characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there
never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a
community." And when, in 1825, La Fayette had read to him the list
of Marietta pioneers,--nearly fifty military officers among them,--he
cried: "I know them all! I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode
Island. They were the bravest of the brave!"
Yet, for a long time, Marietta met with small measure of success.
Miasma, Indian ravages, and the conservative temperament of the people
combined to render slow the growth of this Western Plymouth. There
were, for a time, extensive ship-building yards here; but that
industry gradually declined, with the growth of railway systems. In
our day, Marietta, with its ten thousand inhabitants, prospers chiefly
as a market town and an educational center, with some manufacturing
interests. We were struck to-day, as we tarried there for an hour
or two, with the remarkable resemblance it has in public and private
architecture, and in general tone, to a typical New England town--say,
for example, Burlington, Vt. Omitting its river front, and its
Mound Cemetery, Marietta might be set bodily down almost anywhere in
Massachusetts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, and the chance traveler
would see little in the place to remind him of the West. I know of no
other town out of New England of which the same might be said.
Below Marietta, the river bottoms are, for miles together, edged with
broad stretches of sloping beach, either deep with sand or naturally
paved with pebbles--sometimes treeless, but often strewn with clumps
of willow and maple and scrub sycamore. The hills, now rounder, less
ambitious, and more widely separated, are checkered with fields and
forests, and the bottom lands are of more generous breadth. Pleasant
islands stud the peaceful stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time
attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse chestnut, the pawpaw,
the grape, and the willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene is
this through which we glide.
It is evident that it would be a scalding day but for the gentle
breeze astern; setting sail, we gladly drop our oars, and, with the
water rippling at our prow, sweep blithely down the long southern
reach to Parkersburg, W. Va., at the mouth of the Little Kanawha (183
miles). In the full glare of the scorching sun, Parkersburg looks
harsh and dry. But it is well built, and, as seen from the river,
apparently prosperous. The Ohio is here crossed by the once famous
million-dollar bridge of the Baltimore & Ohio railway. The wharf is
at the junction of the two streams, but chiefly on the shore of the
unattractive Little Kanawha, which is spanned by several bridges, and
abounds in steamers and houseboats moored to the land. Clark and Jones
did not think well of Little Kanawha lands, yet there were several
families on the river as early as 1763, and Trent, Croghan, and other
Fort Pitt fur-traders had posts here. There were only half-a-dozen
houses in 1800, and Parkersburg itself was not laid out until ten
years later.
Blennerhassett's Island lies two miles below--a broad, dark mass of
forest, at the head joined by a dam to the West Virginia shore, from
which it is separated by a slender channel. Blennerhassett's is some
three and a half miles long; of its five hundred acres, four hundred
are under cultivation in three separate tenant farms. We landed at the
upper end, where Blennerhassett had his wharf, facing the Ohio shore,
and found that we were trespassing upon "The Blennerhassett Pleasure
Grounds." A seedy-looking man, who represented himself to be the
proprietor, promptly accosted us and levied a "landing fee" of ten
cents per head, which included the right to remain over night. A
little questioning developed the fact that thirty acres at the head
of the island belong to this man, who rents the ground to a market
gardener,--together with the comfortable farmhouse which occupies
the site of Blennerhassett's mansion,--but reserves to himself the
privilege of levying toll on visitors. He declared to me that fifteen
thousand people came to the island each summer, generally in large
railway and steamboat excursions, which gives him an easily-acquired
income sufficient for his needs. It is a pity that so famous a place
is not a public park.
The touching story of the Blennerhassetts is one of the best known in
Western annals. Rich in culture and worldly possessions, but wildly
impracticable, Harman Blennerhassett and his beautiful wife came to
America in 1798. Buying this lovely island in the Ohio, six hundred
miles west of tidewater, they built a large mansion, which they
furnished luxuriously, adorning it with fine pictures and statuary.
Here, in the midst of beautiful grounds, while Blennerhassett studied
astronomy, chemistry, and galvanism, his brilliant spouse dispensed
rare hospitality to their many distinguished guests; for, in those
days, it was part of a rich young man's education to take a journey
down the Ohio, into "the Western parts," and on returning home to
write a book about it.
But there came a serpent to this Eden. Aaron Burr was among their
visitors (1805), while upon his journey to New Orleans, where he hoped
to set on foot a scheme to seize either Texas or Mexico, and set up
a republic with himself at the head. He interested the susceptible
Blennerhassetts in his plans, the import of which they probably little
understood; but the fantastic Englishman had suffered a considerable
reduction of fortune, and was anxious to recoup, and Burr's
representations were aglow with the promise of such rewards in the
golden southwest as Cortes and Coronado sought. Blennerhassett's purse
was opened to the enterprise of Burr; large sums were spent in boats
and munitions, which were, tradition says, for a time hid in the bayou
which, close by our camp, runs deep into the island forest. It has
been filled in by the present proprietor, but its bold shore lines,
all hung with giant sycamores, are still in evidence.
President Jefferson's proclamation (October, 1806) shattered the plot,
and Blennerhassett fled to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland.
Both were finally arrested (1807), and tried for treason, but
acquitted on technical grounds. In the meantime, people from
the neighboring country sacked Blennerhassett's house; then came
creditors, and with great waste seized his property; the beautiful
place was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians, and turned
into ignoble uses; later, the mansion itself was burned through the
carelessness of negroes--and now, all they can show us are the old
well and the noble trees which once graced the lawn. As for the
Blennerhassetts themselves, they wandered far and wide, everywhere
the victims of misfortune. He died on the Island of Guernsey (1831), a
disappointed office-seeker; she, returning to America to seek redress
from Congress for the spoliation of her home, passed away in New
York, before the claim was allowed, and was buried by the Sisters of
Charity.