USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 7
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There were also other resolutions, such as, that the gentlemen rise betimes and make their beds before the appearance of the ladies; that two by two they, should take the skiff and go to market, i. e. buy at the cabins on the banks whatever they had for sale that was eatable, viz., milk, butter, cheese, eggs, chickens, ducks, venison hams cured, and fresh venison, &c. &c. The stores laid in at Pittsburgh were smoked meats, sausages, flour, cornmeal, tea, coffee, sugar, salt, spices sweatmeats, some fruits, and many other things unknown to Noah. We had also our own plates,
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knives, lead spoons, and a superb Dutch-looking set of Pitts- burgh Liverpool ware for tea and breakfast service. For a "consideration" the captain allowed us the use of his big pot, skillet, and Dutch oven; we had our own coffee-pot and other tins.
From our nicnacries 2 we often supplied the captain's table with a desert ; and finally, when about six hundred miles down the river, these extemporaneous sailors received the $16 paid for our passage, they became residuary heirs to all our unbroken crockery and hardware, and to the remnant of our flour and smoked meats. The goodies had disappeared two hundred miles higher.
After the adjournment of our assembly, we proceeded to ar- range the cabin as described, spending the whole day in "fixing ;" an Americanism extended to unfixing, removing, and deranging, as well as to placing and rendering permanent. But at ten o'clock, P. M., the pitchy darkness rendered longer floating hazardous, and we accordingly came, not to anchor, but to a tie, i. e. working - the ark to the nearest bank, we tied her (an ark contains, if it does not breed) tied her to a tree, and in the very way formerly done by the pious Æneas and his wandering Trojans. Yet we did not, as those heroes, sleep on the sand or the grass, but retired to our berths or boxes, setting a watch, however, to guard against two dangers of diametrically opposite characters. First, it was necessary to take care that the tie-rope neither got loose nor broke, when we should float off into the perils of a dark river- that is, find too much water; and, secondly, we must watch the subsidence of the river, lest she (the ark) be left grounded some two or three feet from her natural element-that is, lest we find too little water: a bad fix in English-English as in American- English.
It is very delightful when travellers go to sleep content in being one hundred miles advanced in their journey by the time they are called to breakfast; but not so with the party-we went to bed of necessity and slept on system. True, we awoke, and got up, and ate breakfast and dinner, and even tea and supper, and played away the intervals at checkers with white and red corns, and then tried push-pin and tee-totum-and tried to read,
2 Nicknacks.
4
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and wished for fishing-lines and guns-and walked up the bank and then walked down again, whistling every now and then most devoutly, not for wind, but against it: but alas! the wind would not be whistled against,-it continued to blow all day, long dead ahead up stream, as if it had never heard us; and there we were all day, all the evening, and part of the night, in the self-same identical spot where we came to a tie at ten o'clock, P. M., the night before! And that was deservedly called a pretty considerable of a fix. This happened often enough, however, on other occasions, to practice and improve our patience.
One day, when thus wind-bound about two hundred miles below the first fix, all the common expedients of beguilement being tried and exhausted, Colonel Wilmar proposed marbles-of which he had made a large purchase for his little sons. And at it we went with the zest of boyhood. Happy day! how the blue-col- oured gentry, that haunt the inactive, took wing at the sound of our merry and innocent shouts and laughter! No human habita- tion was in sight; and forests that told their age by centuries stretched their giant-arms over our ring; and from their venerable depths Echo, for the first time since the creation, called back, in amazement, the words of our game, to her more incomprehensible than the heathenish terms of the native Indians! Oh! how she reiterated "Man-lay ! - Clearings ! - 'fen !- knuckle-down !- toy bone !- go to baste!(?)-fat !- histings !- comins about !- hit" black alley !- knock his nicker !- 'tan't fair !- you cheat !- my first-cum multis aliis!" These terms are spelled according to nature-indeed, my soul becomes indignant when I find print- ed, instead of that spirit-stirring, frank-hearted "Hurraw!" that pitiful, sneaking, soulless, civilized, "Huzza". Dare any man say that sounds like the thing? No more than it looks like it. Freeman let nice, pretty, mincing, lady-like dandies huzza ! by note-do you ever cry out Hurraw! ex-tempore.
But at length we waked something more substantial than that . bodiless noun-Echo; for lo! on a sudden came answers, very near and very distinct, if not very melodious, and from the top of the idential bank beneath which we were playing. We looked up, and there stood two hunters, long silent spectators.of the strange game, but who having imbibed the fun of the thing, were now laughing and roaring away as merry as our party !
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After the wind had blown out, we weighed anchor, that is, un- tied ark, and floated away till after midnight, when some clouds so increased the darkness as to prevent our seeing snags, sawyers and planters, and also the ripples indicative of shallows, and we tied again. Perhaps it may be proper here to say a word relative to the above-named impediments in the Western waters.
A planter is the trunk of a tree, perpendicular or inclined, with one end fixed or planted immoveable in the bottom of the river, and the other above or below the surface, according to the state of the water. A snag is a miniature or youthful planter, or sometimes it is made by an upright branch of a large tree itself imbedded horizontally in the bottom. A sawyer is either a long trunk, or more commonly an entire tree, so fixed that its top plays up and down with the current and the wind, and is therefore periodically perilous to the navigator. Ripples are often indices of an ascending sawyer, and also of shoals, as one approaches islands wholly or partially submerged. Large and heavy rafts frequently go against and over most of the smaller obstacles with impunity, but arks like ours would have been staved ; so our night floating especially was never free from jeopardy.
I shall not inflict our whole log-book on the reader and his friends :- how often we tied and untied-went ashore after butter and eggs and the cum multis-nor how it was once my lot to be with Mr. Brown in the skiff when he could not, owing to his extreme longitude, trim boat, and how the vixen of a boat threat- ened to upset, and I had to pull both oars till, weary and long after dark, we overtook our ark, where fears began to be enter- tained about us. No, no,-why should we trespass on patience with the account of our cookery ; our batter cakes, eggs and ham, biscuit and loaf, johnny cakes, steaks, filled chickens, plum pud- dings, and the curious dish of what-nots? And yet it was really marvellous that our endless varieties could all be turned out of four utensils : viz. a tea-kettle and a dutch oven, and a big pot, and a little skillet. Mrs. Goodfellow did well enough with all her fixtures-but it was reserved for our ladies to cook, what most cooks and confectioners knew nothing about-the multum in parvo. Let me, then, in place of the whole log, introduce a new friend.
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In the third day of the descent we began to overhaul an ark, a size (?) less than ours; but this ark, instead of getting out of the way, was evidently striving to get into it; and so, arrived within speaking distance, we were hailed from the strange float with a proposition to link arks. Longing for something new, and ap- prised that combined arks floated better than single ones, our assent was instantly given, and then our arks were soon amicably united and floating side by side. And what would you imagine the neighbour ark contained? A solitary male Yankee! Ay, and such a merry, facetious, fearless, handy, 'cute specimen of the genus as, I guess, was never encountered.
This wonderful biped had left the land of deacons, hard cider, and other steady habits, in imitation of Jack in the good old-fash- ioned story book-to seek his fortune; and now, after trying his luck in twenty different places, and in as many different and even opposite ways, behold ! here was Do-tell-I-want-to-know,3 lord of a whole ark, a solitary Noah floating to a new world at the far end of a flood, if not beyond one! He had cast off at Pittsburgh some hours before ourselves, and had sung, whistled, rowed and eaten his way alone, till we overtook him, when he had hailed us in a very jocose and half singing style, and then brought up his ark with a laugh and a tune. "He was tired," he said, "of his com- pany, and had ought to get into better society,-and seeing we were in a tarnation tearing hurry, he had ought to tow us down to what-d'-ye-call-the-place ?- and as he didn't intend taking ad- vantage of our weakness, he wouldn't ask any thing for his help- except his boarding and a dollar a day."
What-say, however, was very far from vulgarity, and towards ladies, very respectful; still, he was a choice specimen of the uni- versal nation, and Mr. Brown looked on him with astonishment for his peculiarities, but with respect for his independence and enterprise. Our hero's name was, oddly enough, Smith. And as he was always called among us by his surname, I forget whether he told that his Christian name was Thankful or Preserved-his
3 "Do tell!" "I want to know!" were common exclamations of some "down east Yankees" upon hearing any surprising narrative or startling piece of news.
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cognomen, however, was destined to be a proper noun, for our Yankee was, par excellence, the Smith.
Notwithstanding his demand for boarding, we could not in- duce him to eat with us, anxious as we were to pay, if not for towing services, yet for fun. True, he could apply "soft sawder" very judiciously, and indeed, even sometimes out-general Mr. Brown : who, to tell the truth, could "do the nate thing with, the blarney" himself. I shall make no attempt to record their quirks, and quizzes, and repartees, and puns-good things of the sort, like soda-water, had better be taken at the fountain. What became of Smith when we parted at Limestone, I never learned. But never do I hear of a Smith pre-eminent in handicraft, from simple clock-making all the way up to patent nutmeg making; or in the give-and-take-line, from limited auctioneering to enlarged, and liberal, and locomotive peddling of notions; or in modern litera- ture, from magazine writing clean up to magnetisms and ly- ceums, that Noah Smith of the little ark comes not in remem- brance. Verily, if not really metamorphosed, as I sometimes guess, into Sam Slick or Jonathan his brother, he certainly is, if living-a very Slick Feller.
. The twin arks, as our sailors became bolder and more skilful or rash, were allowed at last, the wind permitting, to float all night. One night Smith, then our Palinurus, suddenly beat to quarters, by drumming his heels against the partition and ringing his skillet with the only weapon he carried,-an oyster knife worn usually in his bosom like a dirk, and with its handle exposed. At the same time, as accompaniment, he whistled "Yankee doodle" in superb style, and then exchanged his whistling to the singing of this extemporaneous lyric :-
"Get up, good sirs, get up I say, And rouse ye, all ye sleepers ; See ! down upon us comes a thing To make us use our peepers. Yankee doodle, &c.
"Yet what it is, I cannot tell- But 'tis as big as thunder ; Ah! if it hits our loving arks, We'll soon be split asunder. Yankee doodle," &c.
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Roused we were, yet, misled by the manner of our pilot, not as fast as the case really demanded: for just then the ladies looking from their little window up the river, cried out in great alarm, "Col. Wilmar !- Mr. Carlton !- make haste !- something is coming down like an island broke loose !- it is almost on us !" Of course the fins were soon manned, and flapped and splashed with very commendable activity, and just in time to escape the end of an immense raft now sweeping past and within a very few inches of Smith's side; while four or five men on the raft were labouring away at their sweeping oars, showing that our escape was due to their exertions, and not our own. Smith, however, who had, it seems, made his calculation, as soon as he perceived the raft likely to pass very near, now leaped upon it with a rope in his hand; and with the permission of the men, and indeed with their assistance too, held on till he gained the far end of the great float, when, our arks made fast behind it, we began to go a-head in earnest.
Safe now from all attacks in the rear-for nothing could out- float us-and bidding defiance to planter, snag, and sawyer, we boxed ourselves up for the remainder of the night and enjoyed a profound sleep, awakening in due season to the full reality of our improved condition. And here, writing in the very noon of gas and steam, I do deliberately say, after all my experience of cars and boats, that for a private party of the proper sort nothing is so delightful, so exhilarating, so truly bewitching to travel in, as twin-arks towed along by an almost endless raft. To say noth- ing of our state room for ladies, parlour for company, kitchen for cookery, and Smith's whole ark extra for dining and sitting -there was our grand promenade deck on the raft,-a deck, full three hundred feet long and fifty broad! What cared we for bursting boilers ;- what for snag and sawyer? And if any serious injury happened to one of the trio, or even two, the third un- harmed afforded retreat and shelter. In comfort, convenience, and freedom, two arks and a long raft carry away the palm.
Indeed, our flotilla was truly poetic and romantic. And never before, certainly never since, was there or has there been such a season; it was an old-fashioned April, and of the most delicious sort. Spring her very self was enticed by it from her southern
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retreats, and came to meet and conduct us to her beauteous do- mains. How bright and warm and soft the sunlight of that sea- son ! encouraging flower and leaf to unfold their modest glories to the genial rays! Did a bank of clouds rest on the horizon? That was no portent of storm : it was only that a single cloud might be detached to sprinkle river and hill with "the sunshiny shower that won't last an hour!" Oh, the joy! then, to watch the contest between the rainbow-tinted drops and misty sunshine,-the con- test for victory ! And how the fish leaped out to catch a pure crystal drop before it fell and mingled with the flood of turbid waters! And the birds-they plunged into the shower of liquid light, bathing their plumage of gold and scarlet and purple, till it seemed burnished still brighter in such a bath!
But the sunsets, and the twilight! The witchery then entranced the very soul! All of poetry, and of shadowy forms, and of sinless elysium,-all of magic in musings and dreams-all was embodied there! The etherial floated on the river's bosom, while its now unruffled waters floated our rude vessels. It dwelt in the dark mirror, where shadows of cliff and forest pointed to a depth down, down away, far beyond the sounding-line. It was melting in the blazing river, whence farewell rays were reflected as the sun hid behind some tall and precipitous headland. Ay! we heard the unearthly in the whispers of eddying waters sport- ing around us; and in the sweet and thrilling evening songs of happy birds! We saw it, till the soul was phrenzied, as gliding past one island, another in front arose to intercept, and we were seemingly shut within a fairy lake, never to find an egress! And here when the breath of day was done, and the songs of the birds hushed, and Wilmar or Clarence was seated on the raft and with a flute-oh the pure, sweet, plaintive, joyous, wild, ravishing cries of the echoes !
If one would hear the "magic flute," it must be as then and there. The Muses haunted then the forest-clad banks and cliffs ; and startled and pleased with the melody of a strange instrument, they caught its strains-and called to one another, imitating its tones, till they died away in the distance. Years after I passed up and down that same river in steamboats-but in vain did I look for the visions and listen for the strains of the by-gone
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evenings. Alas! April had such showers no more! The noise and fierce and fiery spirit of the steamers had driven away the gentle birds and heavenly echoes-and with an oppressed and melancholy heart I heard, returning from the banks, only the angry roar of deserted and sullen and indignant forests !
The seventh day was at its close, when we deemed ourselves so near Limestone (the modern Maysville), that it was deter- mined to send the colonel and the author in the skiff to that place, in order to have arrangements made before the arrival of the grand flotilla ;- for there the raft was to be broken up and scat- tered, and so was our party. Accordingly, before day-break on the eighth morning, we set off with the skiff, agreeing to row and steer alternately, each a mile, as near as could be guessed at : and this agreeable alternation was called-spelling one another. At the end of nine spells, we discovered on a bank, just about "sunup," a full grown male Buckeye, a little in advance of his cabin, watching our progress-we hailed :
"Hallow !- how far to Limestone?" 4
"Ten miles."
Ten miles !- we had thought it now about a mile-but the recitation in rowing was not yet ended; and so we went to spell- ing it ten times more. We were, of course, perfect by the time we did reach Limestone; at all events, I was so pleased with my improvement, that from that hour I have never touched an oar! In about an hour after the colonel and Mr. Carlton arrived at port, the raft, its caboose in the centre, and our arks in its rear, hove in sight; and we hurried to the landing with separate con- veyances hired for our separate journeys :
*
Reader ! which way will you go? With the gallant colonel and the lovely Miss Wilmar, and the faithful Mr. Clarence to Lexing- ton? or will you stay with Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith at Lime- stone? or will you not accompany Mr. and Mrs. Carlton to the New Purchase? Perhaps you prefer to shake hands with all :- we, however, of the party found that no easy task. Many were
+ Probably Louisville. The Halls drove north through Indiana from New Albany.
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our pretexts for lingering-till at last all pretences exhausted- with emotion, ay, with tears that would come, hands were grasped -good wishes exchanged-and we uttered with tremulous voices Farewell !
CHAPTER IX.
THE SEARCHING.
"In medias res- "Floundering into mud holes-"
"WHO could have dreamed, my dear," said Mrs. C. to her husband, "these forests so picturesque when seen from the Ohio, concealed such roads ?"
Mr. C. made no reply; although the phenomenon was cer- tainly very remarkable ;- in fact, his idea about the Muses was passing in review-and he thought, maybe after all, it was some- thing else that had echoed the flute notes. The lady's query, how- ever, and the gentleman's silence occurred about thirty miles due north of the Ohio River, in a very new State of the far west. They were seated in a two-horse Yankee cart,-a kind of mongrel dearborne-amid what was now called their "plunder"-with a hired driver on the front seat, and intending to find, if possible, a certain spot in a very uncertain part of the New Purchase-about one hundred and twenty honest miles in the interior, and beyond Shining River. This was the second day of practice in the elementary lessons of forest travelling; in which, however, they had been sufficiently fortunate as to get a taste of "buttermilk land,"-"spouty land,"-and to learn the nature of "mash land"- "rooty and snaggy land"-of mud holes, ordinary and extraordi- nary-of quick sands-and "corduroys" woven single and double - twill-and even fords with and without bottom.
The autumn is decidedly preferable for travelling on the virgin soil of native forests. One may go then mostly by land and find the roads fewer and shorter; but in the early spring, branches- (small creeks)-are brim full, and they hold a great deal; con-
ʻ
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cealed fountains bubble up in a thousand places where none were supposed to lurk; creeks turn to rivers, and rivers to lakes, and lakes to bigger ones; and as if this was too little water, out come the mole rivers that have burrowed all this time under the earth, and which, when so unexpectedly found are styled out there- "lost rivers !"1 And every district of a dozen miles square has a lost river. Travelling by land becomes of course travelling by water, or by both : viz., mud and water. Nor is it possible if one would avoid drowning or suffocation to keep the law and follow the blazed road; but he tacks first to the right and then to the left, often making both losing tacks; and all this, not to find a road but a place where there is no road,-untouched mud thick enough to bear, or that has at least some bottom.
Genuine Hoosiers, Corn-crackers, et id omne genus-(viz. all that sort of geniuses)-lose comparatively little time in this spe- cies of navigation; for such know instinctively where it is proper to quit the submerged road of the legislature, and where they are likely to fulfill the proverb "out of the frying pan into the fire." And so we, at last, in utter despair of finding royal road to the New Purchase, did enter souse into the most-ill-looking, dark-coloured morasses, enlivened by steams of purer mud cross- ing at right angles, and usually much deeper than we cared to discover.
The first night we had stayed at a "public;" yet while the tavern was of brick, candour forces me to record that affairs so much resembled the hardware and crockery in their streaked and greasy state after Messrs. Brown & Co. had cleaned them, that we were rejoiced-prematurely however-when morning allowed us half-refreshed to resume our land tacking. But more than once afterwards did we sigh even for the comforts of the Brick Tavern, with its splendid sign of the sun rising and setting between two partitions of paint intended for hills; and which sun looked so much like spreading rays, that a friend soberly asked us afterward-"If we didn't put up the first night at the sign of the Fan?"
1 Lost river in Indiana runs west through Orange County, near French Lick, emptying into the West Fork of White River. Hall crossed it on his way to the Purchase.
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It was now after sunset on our second day, that we inquired with much anxiety at a miserable cabin, how far it was to the next tavern, and we were answered-"A smart bit yet-maybe more nor three miles by the blaze-but the most powerfullest road!" Since early morning we had, with incessant driving, done nearly twenty miles; if then we had, in a bad road, done by. daylight about one and a half miles per hour, how were we likely to do three miles in the dark, and over what a native styled- the "most powerfullest road?" Hence, as the lady of the cabin seemed kind, and more than once expressed compassion for "my womin body"-(so she called Mrs. C.) and as she "allowed" we had better stop where we were, with a sudden and very re- spectful remembrance of the Rising or Setting Fan Tavern, we agreed to halt. And so-at long last-we were going really and actually to pass a night in a veritable, rite-dite, cabin ! 2-in a vast forest too-and far enough from all the incumbrances of eastern civilization !
"And did you not thrill Mr. Carlton?"
"I rather think, dear reader,-I did" ;- at least I felt some sort of a shiver; especially as the gloom of the frightful shades increased; and the deafening clangour of innumerable rude frogs in the mires and on the trees arose; and the whirl and hum and buzz of strange, savage insects and reptiles, and of winged and unwinged bugs, began and increased and grew still louder; and vapours damp, chilly and fœtid ascended and came down; and the only field in sight was a few yards of "clearing," stuck with trunks of "deadened" trees and great stumps blacken- ed with the fires! And I think the thrill, or whatever it was, grew more and more intense on turning towards the onward road, and finding a suspicion in my mind that it only led to the endless repetition of the agreeable night scene around us-ah! ha !- maybe so-and then came retrospective visions of friends in the far East now-till-"what?"-I hardly know what-till something, however, like a wish came, that it were as easy to float up the Ohio as down. Heyho!
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