Half a mile below the Rocking cave, we stopped at Perkins’s finely situated farm, where we feasted on some good buttermilk, and bought some eggs, but on demanding the price, and being asked by Mrs. Perkins, with an unblushing face, four times as much as we had hitherto paid for the first article, and twice as much as had ever been demanded for the second, we left the eggs with her, and paid her for the buttermilk, not however without telling her, how much she ought to be ashamed to take such advantage of the necessities of travellers.
The right hand shore now consisted of bold projecting rocks, with openings at intervals, in all of {249} which are settlements, while the Kentucky side being low is more thinly inhabited.
After passing Hurricane island, we came to Robins’s ferry on the right, from whence is a road one hundred and thirty miles to Kaskaskias on the Mississippi, and about two miles lower on the left, we observed one of the finest situations we had seen on the Ohio; it was a hill occupied by a house and farm, opposite to a rectangular bend of the river which forms a beautiful bason. Three miles further on the right, is a hill with a remarkable face to the river, of perpendicular rocks of a reddish colour, below which, is a settlement and a creek, from whence Cumberland river is twenty-five miles distant.
Four miles more brought us to Lusk’s ferry on the right, now owned by one Ferguson from South Carolina, who has a very good house and fine farm, with Little Bay creek joining the Ohio just above. The main road from Kentucky to Kaskaskias crosses here—the latter distant one hundred and fifteen miles.
Having passed the Three Sisters’ islands and Big Bay creek on the right, at eleven miles below Ferguson’s, we rowed in to the right shore, and moored to some trees, where we had a heavy storm all night, with thunder, lightning, and hail as large as pigeons’ eggs.
May 19th, proceeding at early dawn, we passed Stewart’s island on the left, and the first of Cumberland islands on the right, just below which, we observed on the Indian shore, the fine settlement we had seen from Big Bay creek, nine miles.
With some difficulty and much rowing, we forced our boats into the narrow Kentucky channel of the second Cumberland island a mile below the first, as otherwise we should not have been able to have got into Cumberland river, which the second island overlaps. A mile more brought us to the entrance of {250} Cumberland river, across which we rowed, and moored at the little town of Smithland.
This town contains only ten or a dozen houses and cabins, including two stores, two taverns and a billiard table. There appears to be only about thirty acres of land, badly cleared and worse cultivated around it, though the soil seems very good, but as it is as yet only considered as a temporary landing to boats bound up and down Cumberland river, the inhabitants depend on what they can make by their intercourse with them, and are not solicitous to cultivate more land than will suffice to give them maize enough for themselves and their horses. They live chiefly on bacon, which comes down the two rivers, and corn, being too indolent to butcher or to fish, though they might raise any quantity of stock, and doubtless the Ohio and Cumberland both abound in fish. On the whole it is a miserable place, and a traveller will scarcely think himself repaid by a sight of the Cumberland, for stopping at Smithland.
There is an old Indian burying ground at the upper end of the town, where we found several human bones enclosed in thin flattish stone tombs close to the surface.
Cumberland river mixes its clear blue stream with the muddy Ohio at an embouchure of about three hundred yards wide. It is the principal river for business in the state of Tennessee, Nashville the capital, being situated on its banks, one hundred and eighty miles by water, and one hundred and thirty by land, above its conflux with the Ohio.[181]