On the water with them, now near, now far, were other boats,—ferry flats and Alleghany skiffs, pirogues hollowed from prodigious sycamores, dug-outs and canoes, stately barges with masts and sails and lifted decks like schooners, keel boats, slim and trim for low waters, Kentucky arks, broadhorns, roomy and comfortable, filled up with chairs, beds, stoves, tables, bound for the Sangamon, Cape Girardeau, Arkansas.
Floating caravans of men, women, children, servants, cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, and fowl were travelling down the great river. Some boats fitted up for stores dropped off at the settlements, blowing the bugle, calling the inhabitants down to trade.
Here a tinner with his tinshop, with tools and iron, a floating factory, there a blacksmith shop with bellows and anvil, dry-goods boats with shelves for cutlery and cottons, produce boats with Kentucky flour and hemp, Ohio apples, cider, maple sugar, nuts, cheese, and fruit, and farther down, Tennessee cotton, Illinois corn, and cattle, Missouri lead and furs, all bound for New Orleans, a panorama of endless interest to Julia. Here white-winged schooners were laden entirely with turkeys, tobacco, hogs, horses, potatoes, or lumber. Nature pouring forth perennial produce from a hundred tributary streams.
A bateau could descend from the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans in three weeks; three months of toil could barely bring it back. How could boats be made to go against the current? Everywhere and everywhere inventive minds were puzzling over motors, paddles—duck-foot, goose-foot, and elliptical,—wings and sails, side-wheels, stern-wheels, and screws,—and steam was in the air.
As the sun went down in lengthening shadows a purple haze suffused the waters. Adown La Belle Rivière, "the loveliest stream that ever glistened to the moon," arose the evening cadence of the boatmen,—
"Some row up, but we row down,
All the way to Shawnee Town,
Pull away! Pull away!
Pull away to Shawnee Town."
The crescent moon shone brightly on crag and stream and floating forest, the air was mild and moist, the boat glided as in a dream, and the mocking bird enchanted the listening silence.