{116} CHAPTER XVII
Old-town creek, and a floating mill—Take two passengers, both curious characters—Laughable anecdote of a panick—Some of the customs of the backwoodsmen—Their fondness for, and mode of fighting—Their disregard of being maimed, illustrated by an anecdote—Le Tart’s falls—Graham’s station—Jones’s rocks.
Proceeding on Saturday 25th July at 5 in the morning—at six we were three miles below Neisanger’s, abreast of Old-town creek on the right, and a floating mill owned by an Irishman named Pickets. These kind of mills are of a very simple construction—the whole machinery being in a flat, moored to the bank, and the stones being put in motion by the current. They have but little power, not being capable of grinding more than from fifteen to twenty bushels of wheat per day.
We were here hailed by two men who offered to work their passage to the falls. We took them on board, and one proved to be one Buffington, son to the owner of Buffington’s island, from whom Pickets had purchased his farm and mill, and the other was an eccentrick character, being an old bachelor, without any fixed place of abode, residing sometimes with one farmer and sometimes with another, between Marietta and Galliopolis, and making a good deal of money by speculating in grain, horses, hogs, cattle, or any thing he can buy cheap and sell dear.
Buffington was a very stout young man, and was going to the falls to attend a gathering (as they phrase it in this country) at a justice’s court, which squire Sears, who resides at the falls, holds on the last Saturday of every month: He supposed there would be sixty or seventy men there—some plaintiffs, and some defendants in causes of small debts, actions of defamation, assaults, &c. and some to wrestle, fight, {117} shoot at a mark with the rifle for wagers, gamble at other games, or drink whiskey. He had his rifle with him and was prepared for any kind of frolick which might be going forward. He was principally induced to go there from having heard that another man who was to be there, had said that he could whip him (the provincial phrase for beat.) After his frolick was ended he purposed returning home through the woods.
He related a laughable story of a panick which seized the people of his neighbourhood about two years ago, occasioned by a report being spread that two hundred Indians were encamped for hostile purposes on the banks of Shade river.
The Pickets’s and some others not accustomed to Indian war, forted themselves, and hired Buffington to go and reconnoitre. He hunted, and, to use his own language, fooled in the woods three or four days; then returned late in the evening to his own house, and discharged his two rifles, giving the Indian yell after each, which so terrified the party forted at Pickets’s, that the centinels threw down their rifles, and ran into the river up to the belts of their hunting shirts. The whole party followed—crossed the Ohio in canoes, and alarmed the Virginia side by reporting that Buffington’s wife, and some others, who had not been forted, were shot and scalped by the Indians; but when the truth came out, they were much ashamed.
Buffington deals in cattle and hogs, which he occasionally drives to the south branch of the Potomack, where they find a ready market for the supply of Baltimore and the sea coast. The common price here is about three dollars per cwt.
Two or three years ago when bear skins were worth from six to ten dollars each, he and another man killed one hundred and thirty-five bears in six weeks.
{118} It may not be improper to mention, that the backwoodsmen, as the first emigrants from the eastward of the Allegheny mountains are called, are very similar in their habits and manners to the aborigines, only perhaps more prodigal and more careless of life. They depend more on hunting than on agriculture, and of course are exposed to all the varieties of climate in the open air. Their cabins are not better than Indian wigwams. They have frequent meetings for the purposes of gambling, fighting and drinking. They make bets to the amount of all they possess. They fight for the most trifling provocations, or even sometimes without any, but merely to try each others prowess, which they are fond of vaunting of. Their hands, teeth, knees, head and feet are their weapons, not only boxing with their fists, (at which they are not to be compared for dexterity, to the lower classes in the seaports of either the United States, or the British islands in Europe) but also tearing, kicking, scratching, biting, gouging each others eyes out by a dexterous use of a thumb and finger, and doing their utmost to kill each other, even when rolling over one another on the ground; which they are permitted to do by the byestanders, without any interference whatever, until one of the parties gives out, on which they are immediately separated, and if the conqueror seems inclined to follow up his victory without granting quarter, he is generally attacked by a fresh man, and a pitched battle between a single pair often ends in a battle royal, where all present are engaged.
A stranger who had kept aloof during a fray of this kind, when it was over, seeing a man with the top of his nose bit off, he approached him and commiserated his misfortune. “Don’t pity me,” said the noseless hero, “pity that fellow there,” pointing with one hand to another who had lost an eye, and {119} shewing the eye which he held triumphantly in the other.[95]
{120} Eight miles below Old-town creek we were carried through Le Tart’s falls at the rate of six knots an hour, but the rapid, which it ought to be called more properly than falls, is not more than half a mile long.
Captain or squire Sears’s house, opposite to which we landed our passengers, is very pleasantly situated on the left shore, commanding a view of two islands above the falls, the nearest one in cultivation,—the opposite shore variegated with low hills and valleys, woods, cultivated fields and farm houses, a new water mill which he is building on the right bank of the rapid, and the river below, taking a sudden bend from N. W. to N. E. by N.
A mile and a half lower down we observed a large barge on the stocks in the woods on the right bank.
Four miles from the falls we came to Graham’s station, which is a fine populous settlement, extending about three miles along the left bank of the river, from West creek to Wolfe’s farm house, which is charmingly situated on a cliff. The Ohio side opposite is also well settled.
On passing Wolfe’s we asked a man at the door who it was that lived there: He informed us, and {121} civilly invited us to land and quench our thirst at a fine spring on the beach; but we declined stopping, as we had filled our water cask at Pickets’s mill.
There is a ferry across the Ohio about the middle of Graham’s station, which connects a road from Big to Little Kenhawa, sixteen miles to the former and thirty to the latter.[96]
Nine miles below Wolfe’s, Jones’s rocks, on a hill on the right have a striking appearance. They are of freestone, bare, and heaped upon each other, resembling some of the old Turkish fortifications so numerous in the Levant.
On a small bottom between them and the river, in a very romantick situation, is a farm, seven years old, belonging to a Mr. Jones, who informed us that there is a vein of good coal about a quarter of a mile from his house.
This was the first house we had observed for the last eight miles, though the land on the Virginia side, owned by one Waggoner, seems to be of the first quality.