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and I had no cause to regret it. This gentleman, whose name I have for. gotten, but which is somewhere among my papers, was a native of the city of Nancy, but a resident of Baltimore. He was, like the city itself I believe, Franco-German, speaking the two languages very well, and the English with peculiarities. He had a benevolent and honest countenance and social, agreeable manners, not two free, nor stiffly reserved; and we performed the trip without accident, although we had a narrow escape one day from a sawyer, one of that insidious cast of these river pests, called in western parlance, a sleeping sawyer. It was now the month of May; the atmosphere was mild and balmy, loaded with the perfumes of opening vegetation; we took the oars and the helm alternately; we had a constant succession of pretty views; we put ashore to eat and to sleep, and the whole trip, which occupied some three or four days at the farthest, was perfectly delightful

We put ashore at Vevay, where the Swiss had then newly introduced the cultivation of the vine, to see the vineyards and the mode of cultivation. I have since witnessed this culture on the banks of the Rhine, and found it to be very similar. The vines are closely pruned and kept from becoming woody, and are trained to slender sticks, which, are arranged with the order of a garden bean-bed, which at the proper season, they much resemble. We also tasted the wine, and found it poor.

On the last day of the voyage, we took into our boat a young physician -a Hollander, recently arrived in the country, telling him, that by way of equivalent, we should expect him to take his turn at the oars. He was

a man of small stature-well formed, rather slovenly, yet pretty well dressed, with blue eyes, a florid face, and very voluble. Of all that he said, however, by far the most striking part, was his account of his skill in curing cancer. It was clear that he was an itinerating cancer-doctor. He said, amid other things, that he had received an invitation to go and cure the Governor of Indiana. We now had Indiana on our right hand, and Kentucky on our left.

These are the principal incidents of the trip. We reached our destination in safety, and landed on the superb natural sylvan wall, or park, which is formed by the entrance of Beargrass Creek with the Ohio, just in front of, or a little above, Louisville. Here we sold our boat, took separate lodgings, and parted. I found in a day or two, that my friend from Nancy had a flourishing school for military tactics and the sword exercise, where, at his invitation, I went to visit him. From this man, I learned, as we descended the Ohio, that the right and left banks of a river, in military science, are determined by the supposed position of a man standing at its head, and looking downwards.

I found in the lime-stone rocks which form the bed of the river between the town and Corn Island, the cornu ammonis and some other species of organic remains; and while I remained here, which was several weeks,

I wrote a notice for one of the papers, of a locality of manganese on Sandy river, Ky., and others of some other objects of natural history in the west, which I perceived, by their being copied at the eastward, were well taken. It was my theory, that there was a general interest felt in the Atlantic States for information from the west, and this slight incident served to encourage me.

The steamboat canal since constructed around the falls at this place, was then a project only spoken of, and is here alluded to for no higher purpose than to mention, that in its actual subsequent execution, we are informed the workmen came, at the depth of fourteen feet below the surface of the calcareous rock, to a brick hearth, covered with what appeared to be the remains of charcoal and ashes.

I took walks almost daily, on the fine promenade, shaded with lofty trees, festooned with their native vines, along the Beargrass Creek, which is the common place of landing for arks and boats. On one of these occasions, there came in a large ark, which had been freighted at Perryopolis, on the Yioughagany, some thirty miles from Pittsburgh. The two proprietors were K. and K., Marylanders, both young men, or verging to middle life, who had clubbed together the necessary funds, and in the spirit of adventure, resolved on a trading voyage. There was something in the air and manners of both, which I thought I could trust in for an agree able voyage, especially as they saw in me, not a rival in commerce of any kind, but a mere observer,—a character which I found, on more than one occasion, placed me on grounds of neutrality and advantage. Steamboats are the worst vehicles ever invented by the ingenuity of man to make observations on a country, always excepting the last improvement on locomotive rail-roads. To a naturalist, especially, they are really horrible. Not a tree or plant can be examined; not a shell, or a rock certainly identified. Hundreds of miles are passed in a few hours; the effect of speed is to annihilate space; town succeeds town, and object object, with such rapidity, that there is no distinct time left for observation or reflection; and after the voyager has reached his point of destination, he is often seriously in doubt, what he has seen, and what he has not scen, and is as much puzzled to put together the exact feature of the country's geography, as if he were called to re-adjust the broken incidents of a night's dream. I had yet another objection to this class of boats, at the era mentioned. Their boilers and machinery were not constructed with elaborate skill and strength; their commanders were often intemperate, and a spirit of reckless rivalry existed. whose results were not infrequently exhibited in exploded, sunk, or ground boats, and the loss of lives.

It is a regulation of law that pilots are provided for all boats, descending the falls-a descent, by the way, which can only be made on the Indiana side. When this officer came on board, the owners thought best to go by land to Shippingport. I had less at stake in its safety than they, yet felt a

desire to witness this novel mode of descent; nor did the result disappoint me. Standing on the deck, or rather flat roof of the ark, the view was interesting and exciting. The first point at which the mass of water breaks was the principal point of danger, as there is here a powerful reflux, or eddy current, on the right hand, while the main velocity of the current drives the vessel in a direction which, if not checked by the large sweeps, would inevitably swamp it. The object is to give this check, and shoot her into the eddy water. This was done. The excitement ceased in a few moments, and we passed the rest of the way with less exertion to the men, and got down the remainder of the falls in perfect safety. Ail this danger to the growing commerce of the west, is now remedied by the Louisville canal, which, by a work of but two miles in length, which holds the relative position of a string to the bow, connects the navigable waters above and below those falls, and permits all river craft of the largest burden to pass.

It was about the falls of the Ohio, or a little above, that I first saw the gay and noisy paroquet, or little parrot of the west; a gregarious bird, whose showy green and yellow plumage makes it quite an object to be noticed and remembered in a passage on the lower Ohio. One of these birds, which had been wounded, was picked up out of the river, a few miles below the falls. It was evident, from the occurrence of this species, and other features in the natural history of the country, that we were now making a rapid southing. The red-bud, the papaw, the buckeye, and the cucumber tree, had all introduced themselves to notice, among the forest species, below Pittsburgh; although they are all, I think, actually known to extend a little north of that latitude; and we now soon had added to the catalogue, the pecan and cypress, and the cane, with the constant attendant of the latter, the green briar. I had no opportunity to examine the pecan, until we reached the mouth of the Wabash and Shawneetown, where I went on a shooting excursion with a young Kentuckian, who gave me the first practical exhibition of bringing down single pigeons and other small game with the rifle, by generally striking the head or neck only. I had heard of this kind of shooting before, and witnessed some capital still shots, but here was a demonstration of it, in brush and brier-catching a sight as best one could. The ball used on these occasions was about the size of a large buckshot.

Shawneetown is a word which brings to mind one of the North American tribes, who, between 1632 and the present time, figure as one of the frontier actors in our history. They have, in this time, with the ubiquity of one of their own genii, skipped over half America. They were once, certainly dwellers on the Savannah, if not, at a still earlier day, on the Suanee, in Florida; then fled north, a part coming down the Kentucky river, and a part fleeing to the Delaware, and thence west. They are now on the Konga, west of the Missouri. So much for the association of names

History never remembers any thing which she can possibly forget, and I found at least, one high-feeling personage here, who did not like the manner in which I associated the modern town with reminiscences of the savages. "Why, sir," said he, as we walked the deck of the ark, floating down the Ohio, and getting nearer the place every moment, "we have a bank there, and a court house; it is the seat of justice for Gallatin county; -and a printing press is about to be established;-it is a very thriving place, and it bids fair to remain second to none below the Wabash." "All this, truly," I responded, willing to reprove pride in an easy way, "is a great improvement on the wigwam and the council-fire, and wampum coin-beads." It is sometimes better to smile than argue, and I found it so on the present occasion. I did not wish to tread on the toes of rising greatness, or pour upon a love of home and locality, honorable and praise-worthy in my fellow traveller, the chilling influence of cold historical facts. My allusions were the mere effect of the association of ideas, resulting from names. If the residents of Shawneeton do not like to be associated with the native race, who would not have exchanged a good bow and arrows for all the court houses in Christendom, they should bestow upon the place some epithet which may sever the tie

NO. IV.

After stopping a day or more at Shawneetown, and reconnoitering its vicinity, I proceeded to the mouth of the Cumberland, and from thence, after many days detention at that point waiting for a boat, to the mouth of the Ohio. I found this to be a highly interesting section of the river, from its great expanse and its fine water prospects. The picturesque calcareous cliffs on the west banks, display a novel and attractive line of river scenery. The Ohio had, from its commencement, well sustained the propriety of its ancient appellation of the Beautiful River; but it here assumed something more than beautiful-it was majestic. Let it be borne in mind that this stream, in the course of some seven or eight hundred miles flow from Pittsburg to Shawneetown, had been swelled on the right and left hand by the Scioto, the Muskingum, the Kentucky, the Miami, Green River, Wabash, and other rivers of scarcely inferior size. It is still further augmented, from the left bank, with those noble tributaries, the Cumberland and Tennessee, which bring in the gathered drain of the middle ranges. of the Alleghanies. It is below Shawneetown, too, that the cliffs of the Cave-in-Rock-Coast present themselves on the west shore-with their associations of the early robber-era which has been commemorated by the pen of fiction of Charles Brockden Brown. These cliffs are cavernous, and assume varied forms. They rise in bold elevations, which bear the general name of the Knobs, but which are well worthy of the name of mountains. Distinct from the interest they have by casting their castle-like shadows, at sunset, in the pure broad stream, they constitute a kind of Derbyshire in their fine purple spars, and crystalized galena and other mineralogical attractions. I was told that a German of the name of Storch, who pretended to occult knowledge, had, years before, led money and mineral diggers about these Knobs, and that he was the discoverer of the fine fluates of lime found here.

One can hardly pass these broken eminences, with the knowledge that they tally in their calcareous structure and position with the rock formation of the Missouri state border, lying immediately west of them, without regarding them as the apparent monuments of some ancient geological change, which affected a very wide space of country north of their posi tion. A barrier of this nature, which should link the Tennessee and Mis

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