‘What’s your captain’s name?’
‘Whetstone.’
‘Where are you bound?’
‘To Limestone.’”
“It was the highway of emigration,” a pioneer has written of the Ohio in its early years, “by the old and nearly forgotten flat-boat system.... I was familiar with the sight of these primitive navigators and their sluggish moving vessels when in the early spring days they came down.... I have seen several generations on a single flatboat, from the white haired grand-sire and his aged helpmate, seated in rude chairs of domestic manufacture, with split hickory bottoms, down to the infant babe nestled in its rough hewn cradle, made by the ax of the stalwart young man, father to a group of little ‘towheads’ who surrounded the parents, and their small assortment of household goods. A cow—that domesticated helpmate to the family of the emigrating poor—was generally tied near the center of the flatboat, and on the lumber or planks that were intended, when the voyage terminated, to be made into flooring, and combine with the broken up flat-boat to make a quickly constructed home at some point on the forest covered hills of Kentucky or Ohio, or on the low, flat lands that border the Mississippi.... They were going to settle in the wilderness, with a cow, a flitch of bacon, a small coop of chickens, and, generally, a large family of children.”
Among the heroes of the days of the keel-boat, stands Mike Fink who, in his own words, is described as follows: “I can out-run, out-hop, out-jump, throw down, drag out and lick any man in the country. I’m a Salt-river roarer; I love the wimming and I’m chock full of fight.” Of this typical leader of his class an old magazine, the Western Monthly, gives us this description: “His weight was about 180 pounds; height about five feet, nine inches; broad, round face, pleasant features, brown skin, tanned by sun and rain; blue, but very expressive eyes, inclining to grey; broad, white teeth, and square, brawny form, well proportioned; and every muscle of his arms, thighs and legs, was fully developed, indicating the greatest strength and activity. His person, taken altogether, was a model for a Hercules, except as to size.” No plucky adventure or cunning trickery performed by bargemen from the Hudson to the Mississippi but seems to have been accredited by some one at some time to Mike Fink. One of these, told of Fink et al., is sufficiently typical to represent the other ninety-nine. Voyaging down the Ohio, Fink one day noticed a flock of fine sheep on shore, and, being out of fresh provisions, he determined to secure a supply of mutton without the delay and vexation attendant upon any financial exchange. In his cargo was a number of bladders of Scotch snuff. Obtaining a quantity of this drug he caught a few sheep, rubbed it on their heads and faces, and instantly sent a messenger for the owner whose house was not far distant.
By the time this man appeared the sheep Fink had dosed were deporting themselves in a manner at once disgraceful to the remainder of the flock and prodigiously marvelous to the eyes of their dazed owner. Leaping and bleating, the distracted animals were pawing their heads, rubbing them wildly on the ground and acting in general as though possessed of devils and on the point of dashing down the river bank into the water.
“What’s the matter with my sheep?” exclaimed the alarmed owner.
“Don’t you know?” said Mike, suspiciously.
“No, I don’t!”