USA > Ohio > Allen County > Cairo > On the storied Ohio : an historical pilgrimage of a thousand miles in a skiff, from Redstone to Cairo > Part 13
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Turkey-Buzzards
the town standing out in sharp relief against the dark background of the hill.
Green River (775 miles), a gentle, rustic stream, enters through the wide bottoms of Kentucky. We had difficulty in finding it in the wilderness of willows-might not have succeeded, indeed, had not the red smoke- stack of a small steamer suddenly appeared above the bushes. Soon, the puffing craft de- bouched upon the Ohio, and, quickly overtak- ing us, passed down toward Evansville.
Green River Towhead, two miles below, claimed us for the night. There is a shanty, midway on the island, and at the lower end the landing of a railway-transfer. We have our camp at the upper end, in a bed of spot- less white sand, thick grown to dwarf willows. Entangled drift-wood lies about in monster heaps, lodged in depressions of the land, or against stout tree-trunks; a low bar of gravel connects our home with Green River Island, lying close against the Indiana bank; sand- flies freely joined us at dinner, and I hear, as I write, the drone of a solitary mosquito, -the first in many days; while upon the bar, at sun- set, a score of turkey-buzzards held silent council, some of them occasionally rising and
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On the Storied Ohio
wheeling about in mid-air, then slowly light- ing and stretching their necks, and flapping their wings most solemnly, before rejoining the conference.
CYPRESS BEND, Tuesday, 5th .- The tem- perature had materially fallen during the night, and the morning opened gray and hazy. Evansville, Ind. (783 miles), made a charming Turneresque study, as her steeples and factory chimneys developed through the mist. It is a fine, well-built town, of some fifty thousand inhabitants, with a beautiful little postoffice in the Gothic style-a refutation, this, of the well-worn assertion that there are no credit, able government buildings in our small Amer- ican cities. A railway bridge here crosses the Ohio, numerous sawmills line the bank; alto- gether, there is business bustle, the like of which we have not seen since leaving Louis- ville.
Henderson (795 miles) is a substantial Ken- tucky town of nine thousand souls, with large tobacco interests, we are told, ranking next to Louisville in this regard. Through the morning, the mist had been thickening. While we were passing beneath the railway bridge at Henderson, thunder sounded, and
Audubon at Henderson 257
the western sky suddenly blackened. Pulling rapidly in to the town shore, shelter was found beneath the overhanging deck of a deserted wharf-boat. We had just completed prepa- rations with the rubber blankets and ponchos, when the deluge came. But the sheltering deck was not water-tight; soon the rain came pouring in upon us through the uncaulked cracks, and we were nearly as badly off in our close-smelling quarters as in the open. How- ever, we were a merry party under there, with the Doctor giving us a touch of "Br'er Rab- bit," and the boy relating a fantastic dream he had had on the Towhead last night; while I told them the story of Audubon, whose name will ever be associated with Henderson.
The great naturalist was in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Hen- derson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft, -- and certainly he was a ne'er-do- well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps down the Ohio valley, -he had a favorite saying, that the
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On the Storied Ohio
only way for a botanist to travel, was to walk, -stopped over at Henderson to visit this crazy fellow of whom he had heard. Raf- inesque had a hope that Audubon might buy some of his colored drawings; but when he saw the wonderful pictures which Audubon had made, he acknowledged that his own were inferior-a sore confession for Rafinesque, who was an egotist of the first water. Audubon had but humble quarters, for it was hard work in those days for him to keep the wolf from the door; nevertheless, he entertained the dis- tinguished traveler, whom he was himself destined to far eclipse. One night, a bat flew into Rafinesque's bedroom, and in driving it out he used his host's fine Cremona as a club, thus making kindling-wood of it. Two years later, still steeped in poverty, Audubon left Henderson. It was 1826 before he became known to the world of science, when little of his life was left in which to enjoy the fame at last awarded him.
We had lunch on Henderson Island, three miles down, and for warmth walked briskly about on the strand, among the willow clumps. It rained again, after we had taken our seats in the boat, and the head-wind which sprang
259
Fishermen's Tales
up was not unwelcome, for it necessitated a right lively pull to make headway. W- and the Boy, in the stern-sheets, were not uncom- fortable when swathed to the chin in the blankets which ordinarily serve us as cushions.
Ten miles below Henderson, was a little fleet of houseboats, lying in a thicket of willows along the Indiana beach. We stopped at one of them, and bought a small catfish for dinner. The fishermen seemed a happy company, in this isolated spot. The women were engaged in household work, but the men were spending the afternoon collected in the cabin of one of their number, who had recently arrived from Green River. While waiting for the fish to be caught in a live-box, I visited with the little band. It was a comfortable room, furnished rather better than the average shore cabin, and the Green River man's family of half-a- dozen were well-kept, pleasant-faced, and polite. Altogether it was a much more re- spectable houseboat company than any we have yet seen on the river. But the fish- stories which that Green River man tells, with an honest-like, open-eyed sobriety, would do credit to Munchausen.
The rain, at first spasmodic, became at last
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On the Storied Ohio
persistent. Two miles farther down, at Cy -- press Bend (806 miles), we ran into an Indi- ana hill, where on a steep slope of yellow shale, all strewn with rocks, our tent was hur- riedly pitched. There was no driving of pegs into this stony base, so we weighted down the canvas with round-heads, and fastened our guys to bushes and boulders as best we might. Huddled around the little stove, under the fly, the crew dined sumptuously en course, from canned soup down to strawberries for dessert, - for Evansville is a good market. It is not always, we pilgrims fare thus high-the re- sources of Rome, Thebes, Bethlehem, Hercu- laneum, and the other classic towns with which the Ohio's banks are dotted, being none of the best. Some days, we are fortunate to have aught in our larder.
BROWN'S ISLAND, Wednesday, 6th .- This morning's camp-fire was welcome for its warmth. The sky has been clear, but a sharp, cold wind has prevailed throughout the day, quite counteracting the sun's rays; we noticed townsfolk going about in overcoats, their hands in their pockets. In the ox-bow curves, the breeze came in turn from every quarter, some-
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A Windy Day
times dead ahead and again pushing us swiftly on. In seeking the lee shore, Pilgrim pursued a zigzag course, back and forth between the States, -now under the brow of towering clay banks, corrugated by the flood, and honey- combed by swallows, which in flocks screamed and circled over our heads; again, closely brushing the fringe of willows and sycamores and maples on low-lying shores. Thus did we for the most part paddle in placid water, while above us the wind whistled in the tree- tops, rustled the blooming elders and the tall grasses of the plain, and, out in the open river, caused white-caps to dance right merrily.
We met at intervals to-day, several house- boats, the most of them bearing the inscription prescribed by the new Kentucky license law, which is now being enforced, the essential features of which inscription are the home and name of the owner, and the date at which the license expires. The standard of edu- cation among houseboaters is evinced by the legend borne by a trader's craft which we boarded near Slim Island: "Lisens exp. rs Maye the 24 1895." The young woman in charge, a slender creature in a brilliant red calico gown, with blue ribbons at the corsage,
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On the Storied Ohio
had been but recently married to her lord, who was back in the country stirring up trade. She had few notions of business, and allowed us to put our own prices on such articles as we purchased. The stock was a curious med- ley-a few staple groceries, bacon and dried beef, candies, crockery, hardware, tobacco, a small line of patent medicines, in which blood-purifiers chiefly prevailed, bitters, ginger beer, and a glass case in which were displayed two or three women's straw hats, gaudily- trimmed. The woman said their custom was, to tie up to some convenient shore and "buy a little stuff o' the farmers, 'n' in that way trade springs up," and thus become known. Two or three weeks would exhaust any neigh- borhood, whereupon they would move on for a dozen miles or so. Late in the autumn, they select a comfortable beach, and lie by for the winter.
Mt. Vernon, Ind. (819 miles), is on a high, rolling plain, with a rather pretty little court- house set in a park of grass, some good busi- ness buildings, and huge flouring-mills, which appear to be the leading industry. Another flouring-mill town, with the addition of the characteristic Kentucky distillery, is Union-
263
The Wabash
town (833 miles), on the southern shore-a bright, neat little city, backed by smooth, picturesque green hills.
The feature of the day was the entrance, through a dreary stretch of clay banks, of the Wabash River (838 miles), which divides In- diana from Illinois. Three hundred and sixty yards wide at the mouth, about half the width of the Ohio, it is the most important of the latter's northern affluents, and pours into the main stream a swift-rushing body of clear, green water, which at first boldly pushes over to the heavily-willowed Kentucky shore the roily mess of the Ohio, and for several miles exerts a considerable influence in clarification. The Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft clay bottom, runs an erratic course, and its mouth is a variable location, so that the bounds of Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, fluctuate east and west according to the ex- igencies of the floods. The far-reaching bot- " tom itself, however, is apparently of slight value, giving evidence, in the dreary clumps of dead timber, of being frequently inundated.
An interesting stream is the Wabash, from an historical point of view. La Salle knew of it in 1677, and was planning to prosecute
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On the Storied Ohio
his fur trade over the Maumee and the Wa- bash; but the Iroquois held the portage, and for nearly forty years thereafter forbade its use by whites. Joliet thought the Wabash the headwaters of what we know as the Lower Ohio, and in his map (1673) styled the latter the Wabash, down to its mouth. Vincennes, an old Wabash town, was one of the posts captured so heroically for the Americans by George Rogers Clark, during the Revolution- ary War. In 1814, there was established at New Harmony, also on the Wabash, the com- munistic seat of the Harmonists, who had moved thither from Pennsylvania, to which, dissatisfied with the West, they returned ten years later.
Numerous islands have to-day beautified the Ohio. Despite their inartistic names, Diamond and Slim are tipped at head and foot with charming banks and willowed sand, and each center is clothed in a luxurious for- est, rimmed by a gravelly beach piled high with drift and gnarled roots: the whole, with startling clearness, inversely reflected in the mirrored flood. Wabash Island, opposite the mouth of the great tributary, is an insular woodland several miles in length.
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Shawneetown
Among the prettiest of these jewels stud- ding our silvery path, is the upmost of the little group known as Brown's Islands, on which we are passing the night. It was an easy landing on the hard sand, and a com- fortable carry to a level opening in the wil- lows, where we have a model camp with a great round sycamore block for a table; an Evansville newspaper does duty as a table- cloth, and two logs rolled alongside serve for seats. Four miles below, the smoke of Shaw- neetown (848 miles) rises lazily above the dark level line of woods; while across the river, in Kentucky, there is an unbroken for- est fringe, without sign of life as far as the eye can reach. A long glistening bar of sand connects our little island home with the Illi- nois mainland; upon it was being held, in the long twilight, that evening council of turkey- buzzards, which we so often witness when in an island camp. Sand-pipers went fearlessly about among them, bobbing their little tails with nervous vehemence; redbirds trilled their good-nights in the tree-tops; and, daintily wading in the sandy shallows, object lessons in patience, were great blue herons, carefully peering for the prey which never seems to be
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On the Storied Ohio
found. As night closed in upon us, owls dis- mally hooted in the mainland woods, buzzards betook themselves to inland roosts, herons winged their stately flight to I know not where, and over on the Kentucky shore could faintly be heard the barking of dogs at the little "cracker" farmsteads hid deep in the lowland forest.
CHAPTER XX.
SHAWNEETOWN-FARM-HOUSES ON £ STILTS- CAVE-IN-ROCK-AN ISLAND NIGHT.
HALF-MOON BAR, Thursday, June 7th .- A head-breeze prevailed all day, strong enough to fan us into a sense of coolness, but leaving the water as unruffled as a mill-pond; thus did we seem, in the vivid reflections of the early morning, to be sailing between double lines of shore, lovely in their groupings of luxuriant trees and tangled heaps of vine-clad drift. It was a hazy, mirage-producing atmosphere, the river appearing to melt away in space, and the ever-charming island heads looming un- supported in mid-air. From the woods, the piercing note of locusts filled the air as with the ceaseless rattle of pebbles against innu- merable window-panes.
At a distance, Shawneetown appears as if built upon higher land than the neighboring bottom; but this proves, on approach, to be an optical illusion, for the town is walled in by a
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-
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On the Storied Ohio
levee some thirty feet in height, above the top of which loom its chimneys and spires. Shawnee- town, laid out in 1808, soon became an im- portant post on the Lower Ohio, and indeed ranked with Kaskaskia as one of the principal Illinois towns, although in 1817 it still only contained from thirty to forty log dwellings. During the reign of the Ohio-River bargemen, * it was notorious as the headquarters of the roughest elements in that boisterous class, and frequently the scene of most barbarous out- rages-" the odious receptacle," says a chron- icler of the time, "of filth and villany."
In those lively days, which lasted with more or less vigor until about 1830, -by which time, steamboats had finally overcome popular pre- judice and gained the upper hand in river transportation, -the people of Shawneetown were largely dependent on the trade of the salt works of the neighboring Saline Reserve. The salt-licks-at which in early days the bones of the mammoth were found, as at Big Bone Lick-commenced a few miles below the town, and embraced a district of about ninety thousand acres. While Illinois was
* See Chapter XIII.
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Buildings on Stilts
still a Territory, these salines were rented by the United States to individuals, but were granted to the new State (1818) in perpetuity. The trade, in time, decreased with the deca- dence of river traffic; and Shawneetown has since had but slow growth-it now being a dreary little place of three thousand inhab- itants, with unmistakable evidences of having long since seen its best days.
The farmers upon the wide bottoms of the lower reaches now invariably have their dwel- lings, corn-cribs, and tobacco-sheds set upon posts, varying from five to ten feet high, ac- cording to the surrounding elevation above the normal river level. At present we are, as a rule, hemmed in by banks full thirty or forty feet in height above the present stage. After a hard climb up the steps which are frequently found cut into the clay, to facilitate access to the river, it is with something akin to awe that we look upon these buildings on stilts, for they bespeak, in times of great flood, a rise in the river of between fifty and sixty feet.
Three miles above Saline River, I scrambled up to photograph a farm-house of this char- acter. In order to get the building within the field of the camera, it was necessary to mount
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On the Storied Ohio
a cob-house of loose rails, which did duty as a pig-pen. A young woman of eighteen or twenty years, attired in a dazzling-red calico gown, came out on the front balcony to see the operation; and, for a touch of life, I held her in talk until the picture was taken. She was not at all averse to thus posing, and chatted as familiarly as though we were old friends. The water, my model said, came at least once a year to the main floor of the house, some ten feet above the level of the land, and forty feet above the normal river stage; " every few years" it rose to the eaves of this story- and-a-half dwelling, when the family would embark in boats, hieing off to the back-lying hills, a mile-and-a-half away. An event of this sort seemed quite commonplace to the girl, and not at all to be viewed as a calamity. As in other houses of the bottom farmers of this district, there is no wall-paper, no plaster upon the walls, and little or nothing else to be injured by water. Their few household pos- sessions can readily be packed into a scow, together with the live-stock, and behold the family is ready, if need be, to float away to the ends of the earth. As a matter of fact, if they carry food enough with them, and a rain-
27 I
In Egypt
proof tent, their season on the hills is but a prolonged picnic. When the waters suffi- ciently subside, they float back again to their home; the river mud is scraped out of the rooms, the kitchen-stove rubbed up a bit, and soon everything is again at rights, with a fresh layer of alluvial deposit to fertilize the fields.
Few of these small farmers own the lands they till; from Pittsburg down, the great ma- jority of Ohio River planters are but tenants. The old families that once owned the soil are living in the neighboring towns, or in other parts of the country, and renting out their acres to these cultivators. We were told that the rental fee around Owensboro is usually in kind, -fourteen bushels of good, salable corn being the rate per acre. In "Egypt," as Southern Illinois is called, the average rent is four or five dollars in money, except in years when the water remains long upon the ground, and thus shortens the season; then the fee is correspondingly reduced. The girl on the balcony averred that in 1893 it amounted to one-third the value of the average yield.
The numerous huge stilted corn cribs we see are constructed so that wagons can drive up into them, and, after unloading in bins on
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On the Storied Ohio
either side, descend another incline at the far end. Sometimes a portion of the crib is boarded up for a residence, with windows, and a little balcony which does double duty as a porch and a landing-stage for the boats in time of high water. Scattered about on the level are loosely-built sheds of rails, for stock, which practically live al fresco, so far as actual storm-shelter goes.
Usually the flooded bottoms are denuded of trees, save perhaps a narrow fringe along the bank, and a few dead trunks scattered here and there; while back, a third or a half-mile from the river, lies a dense line of forest, far be- yond which rises the low rim of the basin. But just below Saline River (857 miles), a lazy little stream of a few rods' width, the hills, now perhaps eighty or a hundred feet in height, again approach to the water's edge; and henceforth to the mouth we are to have alternating semi-circular, wooded bottoms and shaly, often palisaded uplands, grown to scrub and vines much in the fashion of some of the middle reaches. A trading-boat was moored just within the Saline, where we stopped for lunch under a clump of sycamores. The owner obtains butter and eggs from the
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Cave-in-Rock
farmers, in exchange for his varied wares, and sells them at a goodly profit to passing steam- ers, which will always stop when flagged.
Approaching Cave-in-Rock, Ill. (869 miles), the right bank is for several miles an almost con- tinuous palisade of lime-stone, thick-studded with black and brown flints. In the breaking down of this escarpment, popularly styled Battery Rocks, numerous caves have been formed, the largest of which gave the place its name. It is a rather low opening into the rock, perhaps two hundred feet deep, and the floor some twenty feet above the present level of the river; in times of flood, it is frequently so filled with water that boats enter, and thousands of silly people have, in two or three generations past, carved or painted their names upon the vaulted roof .* From this large entrance hall, a chimney-like hole in the roof leads to other chambers, said to be imposing and widely ramified-"not unlike a Gothic cathedral," said Ashe, an early English traveler (1806), who appears to have everywhere in these Western wilds sought the marvellous, and
* "Scrawled over by that class of aspiring travelers who defile noble monuments with their worthless names."-Ir- ving, in The Alhambra.
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On the Storied Ohio
found it. About 1801, a band of robbers made these inner recesses their home, and fre- quently sallied hence to rob passing boats, and incidentally to murder the crews. As for the little hamlet of Cave-in-Rock, nestled in a break in the palisade, a few hundred yards below, it was, between 1801 and 1805, the seat of another species of brigandage-a land speculation, wherein schemers waxed rich from the confusion engendered by conflicting claims of settlers, the outgrowth of carelessly- phrased Indian treaties and overlapping French and English patents. From 1804 to 1810, a Congressional committee was engaged in straightening out this weary tangle; and its decisions, ratified by Congress, are to-day the foundation of many land-titles in Indiana and Illinois.
We are in camp to-night upon the Illinois shore, opposite Half-Moon Bar (872 miles), and a mile above Hurricane Island. Tower- ing above us are great sycamores, cypress, maples, and elms, and all about a dense jungle of grasses, vines, and monster weeds-the rank horse-weed being now some ten feet high, with a stem an inch in diameter; the dead stalks of last year's growth, in the broad roll-
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An Enchanted Land
ing fields to our rear, indicate a possibility of sixteen feet, and an apparent desire to out- rival the corn. Cane-brake, too, is prevalent hereabout, with stalks two inches or more thick. The mulberries are reddening, the Doctor reports on his return with the Boy from a botanizing expedition, and black-caps are turning; while bergamont and vervain are among the plants newly added to the her- barium.
STEWART'S ISLAND, Friday, 8th .- We arose this morning to find the tent as wet from dew and fog as if there had been a shower, and the bushes by the landing were sparkling with great beads of moisture. The bold, black head of Hurricane Island stood out with start- ling distinctness, framed in rolling fog; through a cloud-bank on the horizon, the sun was bursting with the dull glow of burnished cop- per. By the time of starting, the fog had lifted, and the sun swung clear in a steel-blue sky; but there was still a soft haze on land and river, which dreamily closed the ever- changing vistas, and we seemed to float through an enchanted land.
The approach to Elizabethtown, Ill. (877
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On the Storied Ohio
miles), is picturesque; but of the dry little town of seven hundred souls, with its rocky, undulating streets set in a break in the line of palisades, very little is to be seen from the river. Quarrying for paving-stones appears to be the chief pursuit of the Elizabethans. At Rose Clare, Ill., a string of shanties three miles below, are two idle plants of the Argyle Lead and Fluor-Spar Mining Co. Carrsville, Ky., is another arid, hillside hamlet, with striking escarpments stretching above and be- low for several miles. Mammoth boulders, a dozen or more feet in height, relics doubtless of once formidable cliffs, here line the river- side. The palisaded hills reappear in Illinois, commencing at Parkinson's Landing, a dreary little settlement on a waste of barren, stony slope flanking the perpendicular wall.
Just above Golconda Island (890 miles), on the Illinois side, we were witness to a "meet" of farmers for a squirrel-hunt, a favorite amuse- ment in these parts. There were five men upon a side, all carrying guns; as we passed, they were shaking hands, preparatory to sep- arating for the battue. Upon the bank above, in a grove of cypress, pawpaw, and sycamore, their horses were standing, unhitched from the
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