USA > Ohio > Allen County > Cairo > On the storied Ohio : an historical pilgrimage of a thousand miles in a skiff, from Redstone to Cairo > Part 5
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Just above Witten's commences the Long Reach of the Ohio-a charming panorama, for sixteen and a half miles in a nearly straight line to the southwest. Little towns line the alternating bottoms, and farmsteads are nu-
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On the Storied Ohio
merous on the slopes. But they are rocky and narrow, these gentle shoulders of the hills, and a poor class of folk occupy them-half fishers, half farmers, a cross between my Round Bottom friend and the houseboat no- mads.
A picturesquely-dilapidated log house, with whitewashed porch in front, and a vine arbor at the rear, attracted our attention at the foot of the reach, near Grape Island. I clambered up, to photograph it. The ice was broken by asking for a drink of water. A gaunt girl of eighteen, the elder of two, with bare feet, her snaky hair streaming unkempt about a smirk- ing face, went with a broken-nosed pitcher to a run, which could be heard splashing over its rocky bed near by. The meanwhile, I took a seat in the customary arcade between the living room and kitchen, and talked with her fat, greasy, red-nosed father, who confided to me that he was "a pi'neer from way back." He occupied his own land-a rare circum- stance among these riverside "crackers;" had a hundred and thirty acres, worth twenty dol- lars the acre; "jist yon ways," back of the house, in the cliff-side, there was a coal vein two feet thick, as yet only "worked" for his
Photographing Crackers 8 I
own fuel; and lately, he had struck a bank of firebrick clay which might some day be a "good thing for th' gals."
On leaving, I casually mentioned my desire to photograph the family on the porch, where the light was good. While I walked around the house outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of transition, con- trived to arrange their hair and dress to a de- gree which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for not "slick'n' his ha'r, and wash'n' and fix'n' up, afore hav'n' his pictur' taken;" but the old fellow was obdurate, and joined me in remon- strance against this transformation to the com- monplace, on the part of his women-folk. However, there was no profit in arguing with them, and I took my snap-shot with a con- viction that the film was being wasted.
We were in several small towns to-day, in pursuance of the policy of distributing our shopping, so as to see as much of the shore
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On the Storied Ohio
life as practicable. Chief among them have been New Matamoras (141 miles) and St. Mary's (154 miles), in West Virginia, and Newport, in Ohio (155 miles). Rather dingy villages, these-each, after their kind, with a stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flour- ing mill at the head of the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men lounging about with that air of comfort- able idling which impresses one as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore-for cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with the current; and for foot passengers, a lumbering skiff, with oars chucking noisily in their roomy locks.
Every now and then we run across bunches of oil and gas wells; and great signs, like those advertising boards which greet railway trav- elers approaching our large cities, are here and there perched upon the banks, notifying steam- boat pilots, in letters a foot high, that a pipe line here crosses the river, the vicinity being consequently unsafe for mooring.
Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy ledge at the summit of a rocky bank, ten miles
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A Camp Bore
above Marietta, on the Ohio side. A rod or so back of us is the country road, which winds along at the foot of a precipitous steep. It is narrow quarters here, and too near the high- way for comfort, but nothing better seemed to offer at the time we needed it; and the outlook is pleasant, through the fringing oaks and elms, across the broad river into West Virginia.
We had not yet pitched tent, and all hands were still clambering over the rocks with Pil- grim's cargo, rather glad that there was no more of it, when our first camp-bore ap- peared-a middling-sized man, florid as to complexion, with a mustache and goatee, and in a suit of seedy black, surmounted by a crushed-in Derby hat; and, after the fashion of the country, giving evidence, on his collar- less white shirt, of a free use of chewing to- bacco. I have seldom met a fellow with better staying qualities. He was a strawberry grower, he said, and having been into Newport, a half dozen miles up river, was walking to his home, which was a mile or two off in the hills. Would we object if, for a few moments, he tarried here by the roadside? and perhaps we could accommodate him with a drink of water? Pa- tiently did he watch the preparation of dinner,
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On the Storied Ohio
and spice each dish with commendations of W-'s skill at making the most of her few utensils.
Right glibly he chattered on; now about the decadence of womankind; now about straw- berry-growing upon these Ohio hills-with the crop just coming on, and berries selling at a shilling to-day, in Marietta, when they ought to be worth twenty cents; now on politics, and of course he was a Populist; now on the hard times, and did we believe in free silver? He would take no bite with us, but sat and talked and talked, despite plain hints, growing plainer with the progress of time, that his family needed him at nightfall. Dinner was eaten, and dishes washed; the others left on a botanical round- up, and I produced my writing materials, with remarks upon the lateness of the hour. At last our guest arose, shook the grass from his clothes, with a shake of hands bade me good- night, wishing me to convey his "good-bye" to the rest of our party, and as politely as pos- sible expressed the great pleasure which the visit had given him.
Some farmer boys came down the hillside to fish at the bank, and talked pleasantly of their work and of the ever-changing phases of
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A Street Fakir
the river. Other farmers passed our roadside door, in wagons, on buckboards, by horseback, and on foot; in neighborly tone, but with ill- disguised curiosity in their eyes, wishing me good evening. When the long twilight was almost gone, and the moon an hour high over the purple dusk of the West Virginia hills, the botanists returned, aglow with their exercise, and rich with trophies of blue and dwarf lark- spur, pink and white stone-crop, trailing ar- butus, and great laurel.
And then, as we were preparing to retire, a sleek and dapper fellow, though with clothes rather the worse for wear, came trudging along the road toward Marietta. Seeing our camp, he asked for a drink. Being apparently dis- posed to tarry, the Doctor, to get him started, offered to walk a piece with him. Our com- rade staid out so long, that at last I went down the road in search of him, and found the pair sitting on a moonlit bank, as cozily as if they had been always friends. The stranger had revealed to the Doctor that he was a street fakir, "by perfesh," and had "struck it rich" in Chicago during the World's Fair, but some- how had lost the greater part of his gains, and was now associated with his brother, who had
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On the Storied Ohio
.
a junk-boat; the brother was "well heeled," and staid and kept store at the boat, while the fakir, as the walking partner, "rustled 'round 'mong th' grangers, to stir up trade." The Doctor had, in their talk, let slip some- thing about certain Florida experiences, and when I arrived on the scene was being skillfully questioned by his companion as to the proba- bilities of "a feller o' my perfesh ketch'n' on, down thar?" The result of this pumping pro- cess must have been satisfactory; for when we parted with him, the fakir declared he was "go'n' try 't on thar, next winter, 'f I bust me bottom dollar!"
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A CHARACTERISTIC view, in the upper reaches. The shafts of oil wells are seen thickly strewing the left bank. Railways follow each shore, but only the one on the right is here shown.
Photograph by Chautauqua Photographic Co.
THE RIVER TROUGH
CHAPTER VIII.
LIFE ASHORE AND AFLOAT-MARIETTA, "THE PLYMOUTH ROCK OF THE WEST"-THE LITTLE KANAWHA-THE STORY OF BLEN- NERHASSETT'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.
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On the Storied Ohio
The steamboat traffic is improving as we get lower down. Last evening, between land- ing 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 morn- ing, 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 Cin- cinnati. 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
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Transplanted Yankees
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 England- ers 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 con- cerning them, I went down shore a hundred yards, struggling through the dense fringe of willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting
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On the Storied Ohio
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, anx- ious 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. Céloron was here the year following, with his little band of French soldiers and Indians, vainly endeavoring to turn English traders out of the
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Planting of Marietta
Ohio Valley. Christopher Gist came, some months later; then the trader Croghan, for " Old Wyandot Town," the Indian village on this river, was a noted centre in Western forest traffic. Moravian missionaries appeared in due time, establishing on the banks of the Mus- kingum the ill-fated convert villages of Schön- brunn, Gnadenhütten, and Salem. In 1785, Fort Harmar was reared on the site of Wyan- dot 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 Mari- etta-""the Plymouth Rock of the West."
We smile at these Ohio pilgrims, for digni- fying the hills which girt in the Marietta bot- tom, 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
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On the Storied Ohio
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 hun- dred miles west of their beloved Boston, among many another good thing they did for poster- ity, they established the principle of public education at public cost, as a national prin- ciple.
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 Mus- kingum. 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
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A New England Town
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 inhab- itants, prospers chiefly as a market town and an educational center, with some manufactur- ing interests. We were struck to-day, as we tarried there for an hour or two, with the re- markable 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 Massachu- setts, 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 natu- rally paved with pebbles-sometimes treeless, but often strewn with clumps of willow and maple and scrub sycamore. The hills, now
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On the Storied Ohio
rounder, less ambitious, and more widely sep- arated, 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, Parkers- burg looks harsh and dry. But it is well built, and, as seen from the river, apparently pros- perous. 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
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Blennerhassett's Island
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 be- low-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 chan- nel. Blennerhassett's is some three and a half miles long; of its five hundred acres, four hun- dred 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 tres- passing upon "The Blennerhassett Pleasure Grounds." A seedy-looking man, who repre- sented 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 de- veloped 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 occu- pies the site of Blennerhassett's mansion, -but reserves to himself the privilege of levying toll
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On the Storied Ohio
on visitors. He declared to me that fifteen thousand people came to the island each sum- mer, 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 lux- uriously, adorning it with fine pictures and statuary. Here, in the midst of beautiful grounds, while Blennerhassett studied astron- omy, 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
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Burr's Treason
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 under- stood; but the fantastic Englishman had suf- fered a considerable reduction of fortune, and was anxious to recoup, and Burr's representa- tions 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 evi- dence.
President Jefferson's proclamation (October, 1806) shattered the plot, and Blennerhassett fled to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumber- land. 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
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On the Storied Ohio
waste seized his property; the beautiful place was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians, and turned into ignoble uses; later, the man- sion 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, every- where 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 Sis- ters of Charity.
CHAPTER IX.
POOR WHITES-FIRST LIBRARY IN THE WEST-
AN HOUR AT HOCKINGPORT-A HERMIT FISHER.
LONG BOTTOM, Monday, May 14th. - Push- ing up stream for two miles this morning, the commissary department replenished the day's stores at Parkersburg. Forepaugh's circus was in town, and crowds of rustics were com- ing in by wagon road, railway trains, and steamers and ferries on both rivers. The streets of the quaint, dingy Southern town were teeming with humanity, mainly negroes and poor whites. Among the latter, flat, pallid faces, either flabby or too lean, were under the swarms of blue, white, and yellow sunbonnets-sad faces, with lack-luster eyes, coarse hair of undecided hue, and coarser speech. These Audreys of Dixie-land are the product of centuries of ill-treatment on our soil; indented white servants to the early coast colonists were in the main their ancestors;
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On the Storied Ohio
with slave competition, the white laborer in the South lost caste until even the negro despised him; and ill-nurture has done the rest. Then, too, in these bottoms, malaria has wrought its work, especially among the underfed; you see it in the yellow skin and nerveless tone of these lanky rustics, who are in town to enjoy the one bright holiday of their weary year.
Across the river, in Ohio, is Belpré (short for Belle Prairie, and now locally pronounced Bel'pry), settled by Revolutionary soldiers, on the Marietta grant, in 1789-90. I always think well of Belpré, because here was estab- lished the first circulating library in the Northwest. Old Israel Putnam, he of the wolf-den and Bunker Hill, amassed many books. His son Israel, on moving to Belpré in 1796, carried a considerable part of the collection with him-no small undertaking this, at a time when goods had to be carted all the way from Connecticut, over rivers and mountains to the Ohio, and then floated down river by flatboat, with a high tariff for every pound of freight. Young Israel was public-spirited, and, having been at so great cost and trouble to get this library out to the wilderness, desired his fellow-colonists to en-
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A Pioneer Library
joy it with him. It would have been unfair not to distribute the expense, so a stock com- pany was formed, and shares were sold at ten dollars each. Of the blessings wrought in this rude frontier community by the books which the elder Israel had collected for his Connecticut fireside, there can be no more eloquent testimony than that borne by an old settler, who, in 1802, writes to an Eastern friend: "In order to make the long winter evenings pass more smoothly, by great exer- tion I purchased a share in the Belpré library,
six miles distant. Many a night have I passed (using pine knots instead of candles) reading to my wife while she sat hatcheling, carding or spinning." The association was dissolved in 1815 or 1816, and the books distributed among the shareholders; many of these vol- umes are still extant in this vicinity, and sev- eral are in the college museum at Marietta.
There are few descendants hereabout of the original New England settlers, and they live miles apart on the Ohio shore. We went up to visit one, living opposite Blennerhassett's Island. Notice of our coming had preceded us, and we were warmly welcomed at a sub- stantial farmhouse in the outskirts of Belpré,
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