The weather continuing clear, and without the least prospect of a flood, I have procured a skiff, and determined on proceeding down the river. The skiff is 151/2 feet long, 31/2 wide across the gunwale, and 14 inches deep. This is supposed to be sufficiently large for carrying myself and baggage, (about 800 lbs.) The sides are composed of two boards of pine, three quarters of an inch thick; the bottom flat, and of the same material. It is a light, {66} and certainly not a strong bark. My other equipments are, a copy of the Pittsburg Navigator, (a book recommended as useful, in pointing out the proper course for avoiding bars, and the points where rapids are to be entered;)[41] small quantities of bread, cheese, and dried deer; a small flask with spirits; and a tinned cup, to be used both in drinking water from the river, and in casting out bilge water. Over the after part of the skiff three hoops are fixed, in the form of an arch. A sheet stretched over these, will form a canopy under which I may sleep, by the margin of the river.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] The Pennsylvania legislature, having purchased from the Indians the land north and west of the Allegheny River, in 1789 ordered a tract opposite Pittsburg to be laid off in lots and sold to satisfy the claims of the state troops. Allegheny City, thus established, by its proximity to Pittsburg shared in the rapid growth of the latter, becoming a borough in 1828 and a city in 1840.—Ed.
[38] The building of keel-boats, barges, and later brigs and schooners, had been one of the foremost occupations of Pittsburg since 1790. Seaworthy ships were here launched and floated to New Orleans, whence they sailed to foreign as well as domestic ports. See Harris’s Journal, volume iii of our series, pp. 349, 353. Steamboat building was begun here by agents of Fulton, seven years previous to Flint’s arrival.—Ed.
[39] Stephen Bayard, a colonel in the Revolutionary army, later a merchant in Pittsburg, bought from the Penns, when the town was laid out (1784), thirty-two lots on the present Penn and Liberty streets; a district known for many years as Bayardstown.—Ed.
[40] An American writer.—Flint.
[41] For the Pittsburg Navigator, see Cuming’s Tour, volume iv of our series, note 43.—Ed.
LETTER VI
Descend the Ohio from Pittsburg to Beaver—Occurrences and remarks there
Atkinson’s Tavern, by Beaver,
28th October, 1818.