8. The boatmen are not obliged to row in the present moderately high stage of the water. It is sufficient to make a few pulls occasionally to keep off the shore. Two boats are tied alongside of each other, and put about with the broadside to the stream. They float at the rate of nearly four miles per hour.
9. Last night at dusk, we passed the Swiss settlement Vevay, which lies on the Indiana side of the river.[78] These people are said to be industrious cultivators of the ground. Wine is their staple {132} product. It is procured from a round black grape, nearly the size of a musket ball. The liquor is often of an acid taste, and apt to undergo the acetous fermentation in keeping. We continued our course all night. The owner and I slept in the boat by a fire, where we had scarcely room enough to stretch ourselves. In all other respects this is a pleasant way of travelling. The river, in most parts which we have lately seen, appears to be from five hundred to six hundred yards broad, environed with rich bottoms, and beyond these high limestone ridges. From the tops of these to the water’s edge, the surface is covered with stupendous woods, with cleared farms at intervals. A few of the houses seem to be externally neat, but the majority of them are log cabins. The north side of the river is more thickly settled than the south side, where a negro population is to be seen along the banks.
In the afternoon we heard a remarkable sound issuing from a swamp near the river. I was told that it was the croaking of frogs. There must have been myriads of them in the place, as the noise was incessant, like that of wind amongst trees, or the fall of water over a distant cascade.
A contrary wind forced us to run ashore at a part where the limestone ridge is within thirty yards of the beach. The rock is of the siliceous kind, and the narrow bottom is strewed with large blocks that have tumbled from the steep. In the evening there was much rain and thunder, the wind continuing contrary and violent.
10. Early in the morning we heard the howling of wolves in the woods. Scarcely a single patch of cleared ground is to be seen for several miles.
Louisville is situated at the south-western extremity {133} of a stretch of the river that passes in a straight line for six miles, so that the town terminates a beautiful water prospect.[79] The river is here half a mile in breadth.
The towns passed on the Kentucky side of the river, are, Port-William, and West-Port. Those on the Indiana side, are, Laurenceburg, the Rising Sun, Vevay, and Madison, all places of recent erection and thriving.
The Pittsburg Navigator enumerates sixty islands in Ohio above the falls. They are so uniform in their character, that a description of one of them will give a general idea of all the rest. The upper end is broad, and intercepts part of the gravel that is moved downward during floods, forming a wide bar which acts as a partial dam that divides the stream into two parts, deflecting each of them toward the shores of the mainland, as represented by the figure.
The two currents are then deflected from the shores toward the island, which is thereby curtailed in its lower parts, and at its extremity contracted almost to a point. The two currents unite below, and form a deep channel. At the head of the island the water is shallow. The largest and oldest timber stands on the lower end, and {134} younger plants of willow, sycamore, &c. on the upper end of the island. It is farther to be noticed, that the trees on islands, although of rapid growth, are by no means so large as those on the adjoining banks and bottom lands. The alluvial process deposits gravel at the head. Over this, sand is precipitated; and lastly, a superstratum of mud and driftwood is deposited, forming a rich soil for the growth of timber. These facts, taken in connection, show that additions are continually making at the head, and that the converging streams are simultaneously carrying off the lower end of the island.
