USA > Ohio > Allen County > Cairo > On the storied Ohio : an historical pilgrimage of a thousand miles in a skiff, from Redstone to Cairo > Part 14
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
277
Squirrel-Hunters
poles of the wagons in which they had been driven, and, tied to trees, feeding from boxes set upon the ground. It was pleasant to see that these people, who must lead dreary lives upon the malaria-stricken and flood-washed bottoms, occasionally take a holiday with a spice of rational adventure in it; although there is the probability that this squirrel-hunt may be followed to-night by a roystering at the village tavern, the losing side paying the score.
We reached Stewart's Island (901 miles) at five o'clock, and went into camp upon the landing-beach of hard, white sand, facing Kentucky. The island is two miles long, the owner living in Bird's Point Landing, Ky., just below us-a rather shabby but pictur- esquely-situated little village, at the base of pretty, wooded hills. A hundred and fifty acres of the island are planted to corn, and the owner's laborers-a white overseer and five blacks-are housed a half-mile above us, in a rude cabin half-hidden in a generous ma- ple grove.
The white man soon came down to the strand, riding his mule, and both drank freely from the muddy river. He was a fairly-intel-
278
On the Storied Ohio
ligent young fellow, and proud of his mount- no need of lines, he said, for "this yer mule; ye on'y say 'gee!' and ' haw!' and he done git thar ev'ry time, sir-r! 'Pears to me, he jist done think it out to hisself, like a man would. Hit ain't no use try'n' boss that yere mule, he's thet ugly when he's sot on 't-but jist pat him on th' naick and say, 'So thar, Solomon!' and thar ain't no one knows how to act better 'n he."
As we were at dinner, in the twilight, the five negroes also came riding down the angling roadway, in picturesque single file, singing snatches of camp-meeting songs in that weird minor key with which we are so familiar in "ju- bilee" music. Across the river, a Kentucky darky, riding a mule along the dusky wood- land road at the base of the hills, and evidently going home from his work in the fields, was sing- ing at the top of his bent, possibly as a stim- ulus to failing courage. Our islanders shouted at him in derision. The shoreman's replies, which lacked not for spice, came clear and sharp across the half-mile of smooth water, and his tormentors quickly ceased chaffing. Having all drunk copiously, men and mules resumed their line of march up the bank, and
279
An Island Night
disappeared as they came, still chanting the crude melodies of their people. An hour later, we could hear them at the cabin, singing "John Brown's Body" and other old friends- with the moon, bright and clear in its first quarter, adding a touch of romance to the scene.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CUMBERLAND AND THE TENNESSEE- STATELY SOLITUDES - OLD FORT MAS- SAC -- DEAD TOWNS IN EGYPT-THE LAST CAMP-CAIRO.
OPPOSITE METROPOLIS, ILL., Saturday, June 9th .- As we were dressing this morning, at half-past five, the echoes were again awakened by the vociferous negro on the Kentucky shore, who was going out to his work again, as noisy as ever. One of our own black men walked down the bank, ostensibly to light his pipe at the breakfast fire, but really to satisfy a pardonable curiosity regarding us. The singing brother on the mainland appeared to amuse him, and he paused to listen, saying, "Dat yere nigger, he got too loud voice!" Then, when he had left our camp and regained the top of the bank, he leaned upon his hoe and yelled: "Say, niggah, ober dere! whar you git dat mule?"
280
28 I
Repartee
"Who you holl'rin' at, you brack island niggah?" was the quick reply.
"You lan' niggah, you tink you smart!"
"I'se so smart, I done want no liv'n' on island, wi' gang boss, 'n not 'lowed go 'way!"
The tuneful darky had evidently here touched a tender spot, for our man turned back into the field to his work; and the other, kicking the mule into action, trotted off to the tune of "Dar's a meet'n' here, to-night!"
We went up into the field, to see the labor- ers cultivating corn. The sun was blazing hot, without a breath of air stirring, but the great black fellows seemed to mind it not, chattering away to themselves like magpies, and keeping up their conversation by shouts, when separated from each other at the ends of plow-rows. A natural levee, eight and ten feet high, and studded with large tree-willows, rims in the island farm like the edge of a basin. We were told that this served as a barrier only against the June "fresh," for the regular spring floods invariably swamp the place; but what is left within the bowl, when the outer waters subside, soon leaches through the sandy soil.
After passing the pretty shores of Dog Isl-
282
On the Storied Ohio
and, not far below, the bold, dark headland of Cumberland Island soon bursts upon our view. We follow the narrow eastern channel, in order to greet the Cumberland River (909 miles), which half-way down its island name- sake, -at the woe-begone little village of Smithland, Ky.,-empties a generous flood into the Ohio, The Cumberland, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile wide, debouches through high clay banks, which might readily be melted in the turbulent cross-currents produced by the mingling of the rivers; but to avoid this, the government engineers have built a wing- dam running out from the foot of the Cum- berland, nearly half-way into the main river. This quickly unites the two streams, and the reinforced Ohio is thereafter perceptibly widened.
Tramp steamers are numerous, on these lower reaches. We have seen perhaps a dozen such to-day, stopping at the farm landings as well as at the crude and infrequent ham- lets,-mere notches of settlement in the wooded lines of shore, -doing a small busi- ness in chance cargoes and in passengers who flag them from the bank. A sultry atmos- phere has been with us through the day. The
V IEW near Metropolis, Illinois, showing the character of the lower reaches, " These low, broad, heavily-timbered bottoms" are frequently inundated. " Now and then the encroaching river has remaine'd too long in some belt of forest, and we have great clumps of dead trees, which spring aloft in stately picturesqueness, thickly clad to the limb-tops with Virginia creeper." The shores are lined throughout with driftwood, which with each " rise" is again caught up and given a fresh term of travel.
Photograph by Frank A. Gregory
STATELY SOLITUDES
283
The Tennessee
glassy surface of the river has, when not lashed into foam by passing boats, dazzled the eyes most painfully. The hills, from below Stewart's Island, have receded on either side, generally leaving either low, broad, heavily-timbered bottoms, or high clay banks which stretch back wide plains of yellow and gray corn- land-frequently inundated, but highly pro- ductive. Now and then the encroaching river has remained too long in some belt of forest, and we have great clumps of dead trees, which spring aloft in stately picturesqueness, thickly- clad to the limb-tips with Virginia creeper. A bit of shaly hillside occasionally abuts upon the river, though less frequently than above; and often such a spur has lying at its feet a row of half-immersed boulders, delicately car- peted with mosses and with clinging vines.
The Tennessee River (918 miles), the larg- est of the Ohio's tributaries, is, where it enters, about half the width of the latter. Coming down through a broad, forested bottom, with several pretty islands off its mouth, it presents a pleasing picture. Here again the govern- ment has been obliged to put in costly works to stop the ravages of the mingling torrents in the soft alluvial banks. The Ohio, with
284
On the Storied Ohio
the united waters of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, henceforth flows majestically to the Mississippi, a full mile wide between her shores.
Paducah (13,000 inhabitants), next to Louis- ville Kentucky's most important river port, lies on a high plain just below the Tennessee. It is a stirring little city, with the usual large proportion of negroes, and the out-door busi- ness life everywhere met with in the South. Saw-mills, iron plants, and ship-yards line the bank; at the wharf are large steamers doing a considerable business up the Cumberland and Tennessee, and between Paducah and Cairo and St. Louis; and there is a consider- able ferry business to and from the Illinois suburb of Brooklyn.
Seven miles below the Tennessee, on the Illinois side, we sought relief from the blazing sun within the mouth of Seven Mile Creek, which is cut deep through sloping banks of mud, and overhung by great sprawling syca- mores. These always interest us from the generosity of their height and girth, and from their great variety of color-tones, induced by the patchy scaling of the bark-soft grays, buffs, greens, and ivory whites prevailing.
285
Fort Massac
When sufficiently refreshed in this cool bower, we ventured once more into the fierce light of the open river, and two miles below shot into the broader and more inviting Massac Creek (928 miles), just as, of old, George Rogers Clark did with his little flotilla, when en route to capture Kaskaskia. Clark, in his Journal written long after the event, said that this creek is a mile above Fort Massac; his mem- ory failed him-as a matter of fact, the steep, low hill of iron-stained gravel and clay, on which the old stronghold was built, is but two hundred yards below. *
The French commander who, in October, 1758, evacuated and burned Fort Duquesne on the approach of the English army under General Forbes, dropped down the Ohio for nearly a thousand miles, and built "a new fort on a beautiful eminence on the north bank of the river." But there was a fortified post on this hillock at a much earlier date (about 17II), erected as a headquarters for mission- aries, and to guard French fur-traders from
* "In the evening of the same day I ran my Boats into a small Creek about one mile above the old Fort Missack; Re- posed ourselves for the night, and in the morning took a Rout to the Northwest."-Clark's letter to Mason.
286
On the Storied Ohio
marauding Cherokees; and Pownall's map notes one here in 1751. This fort of 1758 was but an enlarged edition of the old. The new stronghold, with a garrison of a hundred men, was the last built by the French upon the Ohio, and it was occupied by them until they evac- uated the country in 1763. England does not appear to have made any attempt to repair and occupy the works then destroyed by the French, although urged to do so by her mili- tary agents in the West. Had they held Fort Massac, no doubt Clark's expedition to capture the Northwest for the Americans might easily have been nipped in the bud; as it was, the old fortress was a ruin when he "reposed" on the banks of the creek at its feet.
When, in 1793-1794, the French agent Genet was fomenting his scheme for capturing Louisiana and Florida from Spain, by the aid of Western filibusters, old Fort Massac was thought of as a rallying-point and base of sup- plies; but St. Clair's proclamation of March 24, 1794, ordering General Wayne to restore and garrison the place, for the purpose of pre- venting the proposed expedition from passing down the river, ended the conspiracy, and Genet left the country. A year later, Spain, who had at
287
Spain's Intrigues
intervals sought to detach the Westerners from the Union, and ally them with her interests beyond the Mississippi, renewed her attempts at corrupting the Kentuckians, and gained to her cause no less a man than George Rogers Clark himself. Among other designs, Fort Massac was to be captured by the adventurers, whom Spain was to supply with the sinews of
war. There was much mysterious correspond- ence between the latter's corruption agent, Thomas Power, and the American General Wilkinson, at Detroit; but finally Power, in disguise, was sent out of the country under guard, by way of Fort Massac, and his escape into Spanish territory practically ended this interesting episode in Western history. The fort was occupied as a military post by our government until the close of the War of 1812-15; what we see to-day, are the ruins of the establishment then abandoned.
No doubt the face of this rugged promon- tory of gravel has, within a century, suffered much from floods; but the remains of the earthwork on the crest of the cliff, some fifty feet above the present river-stage, are still easily traceable throughout. The fort was about forty yards square, with a bastion at
288
On the Storied Ohio
each corner. There are the remains of an un- stoned well near the center; the ditch sur- rounding the earthwork is still some two-and- a-half or three feet below the surrounding level, and the breastwork about two feet above the inner level; no doubt, palisades once sur- mounted the work, and were relied upon as the chief protection from assault. The grounds, a pleasant grassy grove several acres in extent, are now enclosed by a rail fence, and neatly maintained as a public park by the little city of Metropolis, which lies not far below. It was a commanding view of land and river, which was enjoyed by the garrison of old Fort Massac. Up stream, there is a straight stretch of eleven miles to the mouth of the Tennessee; both up and down, the shore lines are under full survey, until they melt away in the dis- tance. No enemy could well surprise the holders of this key to the Lower Ohio.
Our camp is on the sandy beach opposite Metropolis, and two hundred yards below the Kentucky end of the ferry. Behind us lies a deep forest, with sycamores six and eight feet in diameter; a country road curving off through the woods, to the sparse rustic settlement lying some two miles in the interior-on higher
Opposite Metropolis 289
ground than this wooded bottom, which is an- nually overflowed. Now and then the bluster- ing little steam-ferry comes across to land Kentucky farm-folk and their mules, going home from a Saturday's shopping in Metrop- olis. Occasionally a fisherman passes, lagging on his oars to scan us and our quarters; and from one of them, we purchased a fish. As the still, cool night crept on, Metropolis was astir; across the mile of intervening water, darted tremulous shafts of light; we heard voices singing and laughing, a fiddle in its highest notes, the puffing of a stationary en- gine, and the bay and yelp of countless dogs. Later, a packet swooped down with smothered roar, and threw its electric search-light on the city wharf, revealing a crowd of negroes gath- ered there, like moths in the radiance of a candle; there were gay shouts, and a mad scampering-we could see it all, as plainly as if in ordinary light it had been but a third of the distance; and then the roustabouts struck up a weird song as they ran out the gang- plank, and, laden with boxes and bales, began swarming ashore, like a procession of black ants carrying pupa cases.
19
290
On the Storied Ohio
MOUND CITY TOWHEAD, Sunday, 10th. - During the night, burglarious pigs would have raided our larder, but the crash of a falling kettle wakened us suddenly, as did geese the ancient Romans. The Doctor and I sallied forth in our pajamas, with clods of clay in hand, to send the enemy flying back into the forest, snorting and squealing with baffled rage.
We were afloat at half-past seven, under an unclouded sky, with the sun sharply reflected from the smooth surface of the river, and the temperature rapidly mounting.
The Fort Massac ridge extends down stream as far as Mound City, but soon degenerates into a ridge of clay varying in height from twenty-five to fifty feet above the water level. Upon the low-lying bottom of the Kentucky shore, is still an interminable dark line of forest. The settlements are meager, and now wholly in Illinois: For instance, Joppa (936 miles), a row of a half-dozen unpainted, dilap- idated buildings, chiefly stores and abandoned warehouses, bespeaking a river traffic of the olden time, that has gone to decay; a hot, dreary, baking spot, this Joppa, as it lies sprawling upon the clay ridge, flanked by a
291
Fort Wilkinson
low, wide gravel beach, on which gaunt, bell- ringing cows are wandering, eating the leaves of fallen trees, for lack of better pasturage. Our pilot map, of sixty years ago, records the presence of Wilkinsonville (942 miles), on the site of old Fort Wilkinson of the War of 1812-15, but few along the banks appear to have ever heard of it; however, after much searching, we found the place for ourselves, on an eminence of fifty feet, with two or three farm-houses as the sole relics of the old estab- lishment. Caledonia (Olmstead P. O.), nine miles down, consists of several large buildings on a hill set well back from the river. Mound City (959 miles), -the " America " of our time- worn map, -in whose outskirts we are camped to-night, is a busy town with furniture fac- tories, lumber mills, ship-yards, and a railway transfer. Below that, stretches the vast ex- tent of swamp and low woodland on which Cairo (967 miles) has with infinite pains been built-like "brave little Holland," holding her own against the floods solely by virtue of her encircling dike.
Houseboats have been few, to-day, and they of the shanty order and generally stranded high upon the beach. One sees now and then,
292
On the Storied Ohio
on the Illinois ridge, the cheap log or frame house of a "cracker," the very picture of des- olate despair; but on the Kentucky shore are few signs of life, for the bottom lies so low that it is frequently inundated, and settlement ventures no nearer than two or three miles from the riverside. A fisherman comes occa- sionally into view, upon this wide expanse of wood and water and clay-banks; sometimes we hail him in passing, always getting a re- spectful answer, but a stare of innocent curi- osity.
Our last home upon the Ohio is facing the Kentucky shore, on the cleanly sand-beach of Mound City Towhead, a small island which in times of high water is but a bar. The tent is screened in a willow clump; just below us, on higher ground, sycamores soar heaven- ward, gayly festooned with vines, hiding from us Mound City and the Illinois mainland. Across the river, a Kentucky negro is singing in the gloaming; but it is over a mile away, and, while the tune is plain, the words are lost. Children's voices, and the bay of hounds, come wafted to us from the northern shore. A steamer's wake rolls along our isl- and strand, dangerously near the camp-fire;
293
The Last Night
the river is still falling, however, and we no longer fear the encroachments of the flood. The Doctor and I found a secluded nook, where in the moonlight we took our final plunge.
It is sad, this bidding good-bye to the stream which has floated us so merrily for a thousand miles, from the mountains down to the plain. We elders linger long by the last camp-fire, to talk in fond reminiscence of the six weeks afloat; while the Boy no doubt dreams peace- fully of houseboats and fishermen, of gigantic bridges and flashing steel-plants, of coal-mines and oil-wells, of pioneers and Indians, and all that-of six weeks of kaleidoscopic sensations, at an age when the mind is keenly active, and the heart open to impressions which can never be dimmed so long as his little life shall last.
CAIRO, Monday, IIth .- At our island camp, last night, we were but nine miles from the mouth of the Ohio, a distance which could easily have been made before sundown; but we preferred to reach our destination in the morning, the better to arrange for railway transportation, hence our agreeable pause up- on the Towhead.
294
On the Storied Ohio
Before embarking for the last run, this morning, we made a neat heap on the beach, of such of our stores, edible and wearable, as had been requisite to the trip, but were not worth the cost of sending home. Feeling confident that some passing fisherman would soon be tempted ashore to inspect this curi- ous landmark, and yet might be troubled by nice scruples as to the policy of appropriating the find, we conspicuously labeled it: " Aban- doned by the owners! The finder is welcome to the lot."
Quickly passing Mound City, now bustling with life, Pilgrim closely skirted the monoto- nous clay-banks of Illinois, swept rapidly un- der the monster railway bridge which stalks high above the flood, and loses itself over the tree-tops of the Kentucky bottom, and at a quarter-past eight o'clock was pulled up at Cairo, with the Mississippi in plain sight over there, through the opening in the forest. In another hour or two, she will be housed in a box-car; and we, her crew, having again donned the garb of landsmen, will be speed- ing toward our northern home, this pilgrimage but a memory.
Such a memory! As we dropped below the
295
An Unwelcome End
Towhead, the Boy, for once silent, wistfully gazed astern. When at last Pilgrim had been hauled upon the railway levee, and the Doctor and I had gone to summon a shipping clerk, the lad looked pleadingly into W-'s face. In tones half-choked with tears, he expressed the sentiment of all: "Mother, is it really ended ? Why can't we go back to Browns- ville, and do it all over again ?"
APPENDIX A. HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF OHIO VALLEY SETTLEMENT.
Englishmen had no sooner set foot upon our continent, than they began to penetrate inland with the hope of soon reaching the Western Ocean, which the coast savages, almost as ignorant of the geography of the interior as the Europeans themselves, declared lay just beyond the mountains. In 1586, we find Ralph Lane, governor of Raleigh's ill-fated colony, leading his men up the Roanoke River for a hundred miles, only to turn back dis- heartened at the rapids and falls, which neces- sitated frequent portages through the forest jungles. Twenty years later (1606), Christo- pher Newport and the redoubtable John Smith, of Jamestown, ascended the James as far as the falls-now Richmond, Va .; and Newport himself, the following year, succeeded in reach- ing a point forty miles beyond, but here again was appalled by the difficulties and returned.
296
297
Historical Outline
There was, after this, a deal of brave talk about scaling the mountains; but nothing further was done until 1650, when Edward Bland and Edward Pennant again tried the Roanoke, though without penetrating the wil- derness far beyond Lane's turning point. It is recorded that, in 1669, John Lederer, an adventurous German surgeon, commissioned. as an explorer by Governor Berkeley, as- cended to the summit of the Blue Ridge, in Madison County, Va .; but although he was once more on the spot the following season, with a goodly company of horsemen and In- dians, and had a bird's-eye view of the over- mountain country, he does not appear to have descended into the world of woodland which lay stretched between him and the set- ting sun. It seems to be well established that the very next year (1671), a party under Abra- ham Wood, one of Governor Berkeley's major- generals, penetrated as far as the Great Falls of the Great Kanawha, only eighty miles from the Ohio-doubtless the first English explora- tion of waters flowing into the latter river. The Great Kanawha was, by Wood himself, called New River, but the geographers of the time styled it Wood's. The last title was
298
On the Storied Ohio
finally dropped; the stream above the mouth of the Gauley is, however, still known as New. These several adventurers had now demon- strated that while the waters beyond the mountains were not the Western Ocean, they possibly led to such a sea; and it came to be recognized, too, that the continent was not as narrow as had up to this time been supposed.
Meanwhile, the French of Canada were casting eager eyes toward the Ohio, as a gate- way to the continental interior. But the French-hating Iroquois held fast the upper waters of the Mohawk, Delaware, and Susque- hanna, and the long but narrow watershed sloping northerly to the Great Lakes, so that the westering Ohio was for many years sealed to New France. An important factor in Amer- ican history this, for it left the great valley practically free from whites while the English settlements were strengthening on the sea- board; when at last the French were ready aggressively to enter upon the coveted field, they had in the English colonists formidable and finally successful rivals.
It is believed by many, and the theory is not unreasonable, that the great French fur- trader and explorer, La Salle, was at the Falls
299
Historical Outline
of the Ohio (site of Louisville) "in the autumn or early winter of 1669." How he got there, is another question. Some antiquarians be- lieve that he reached the Alleghany by way of the Chautauqua portage, and descended the Ohio to the Falls; others, that he ascended the Maumee from Lake Erie, and, descending the Wabash, thus discovered the Ohio. It was reserved for the geographer Franquelin to give, in his map of 1688, the first fairly-accu- rate idea of the Ohio's path; and Father Hen- nepin's large map of 1697 showed that much had meanwhile been learned about the river.
No doubt, by this time, the great waterway was well-known to many of the most adven- turous French and English fur-traders, possibly better to the latter than to the former; unfor- tunately, these men left few records behind them, by which to trace their discoveries. As early as 1684, we incidentally hear of the Ohio as a principal route for the Iroquois, who brought peltries "from the direction of the Illinois" to the English at Albany, and the French at Quebec. Two years after this, ten English trading-canoes, loaded with goods, were seen on Lake Erie by French agents, who in great alarm wrote home to Quebec
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.