The Muskingum is about two hundred yards wide, and has a rapid current of from three to four miles an hour, by which a ferry-boat is carried across in something more than a minute, by a very simple but ingenious piece of machinery. A rope of five or six inches in circumference is extended across from bank to bank, and hove taught by a windlass: two rollers play on it fixed in a box to each end of which the ends of two smaller ropes are fastened, whose other ends are led to the two extremities of the ferry flat, and taken round winches with iron cranks, on which the rope at the end of the flat which is to be foremost being wound up, presents the side of the flat to the current at an angle of about thirty degrees. It is then pushed off—the current acts upon it, and it arrives at the opposite side in the time above mentioned.
There is a good road from Marietta, twelve miles up the bank of the Muskingum to Waterford, which is a good settlement with some mills, from whence it is continued northerly, parallel to the general course of the river, to Zanesville,[85] and the interiour of the state.
About half a mile from Marietta, on the bank of the Muskingum, are some curious vestiges of Indian fortification. A parallelogram of seven hundred by five hundred yards is surrounded by a raised bank of two or three feet high, and ten or twelve feet broad, with four entrances opposite to each other on the two longest sides, and opposite to the two oblong platforms at diagonal corners of the parallelogram which are raised four or five feet above the surface of the natural plain. A causeway forty yards wide, and from ten to twelve feet high, rounded like a turnpike {107} road, leads from it to the river. Three hundred yards nearer the town is a mount resembling the monument at Grave creek and about half its height and size, surrounded by a ditch four feet deep, through which are two entrances.
We got a good dinner at Monsall’s tavern, where major Joseph Lincoln,[86] to whom I had a letter of introduction, politely called on us, conversed with us, and gave us much information; and regretted that our determination to descend the river directly after dinner prevented his being favoured with our company at his house.
Two block houses still remain in Marietta, out of which it was very unsafe to go singly previous to Wayne’s treaty, as the Indians were always lurking about, on the watch to shoot and scalp, when such opportunities were given them, and in which they were frequently but too successful.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] The following account of uncommon petrifactions from Georgia and Kentucky, we copy from the New York Medical Repository, vol. ii, page 415.
“Two rare extraneous fossils have been discovered, one in Georgia and the other in Kentucky. They have both been presented to Dr Mitchill. The former was brought by general David Meriwether, from a spring not very distant from the high shoals of the river Apalachy. It is rather above the size and thickness of a Spanish dollar, except that it is somewhat gibbous or convex on the upper side. From the centre proceed five bars, of four rays each, in the direction of radial lines, but connected by curves before they reach the circumference. On the under side are five grooves or creases, corresponding with the five radial bars above, one crease below to four rays above. At the centre beneath is a considerable concavity, corresponding with the convexity on the outside. There is reason to believe that it is an echinus, or sea-urchin of which the species are very numerous, some of them nearly flat, and many are found buried in the earth at great distances from the ocean.—From the place where this was found, it was computed there were enough, by estimation, to fill a bushel. And what was very remarkable, they were so nearly alike that they seemed to have been fashioned in the same mould, and have not been discovered in any other place.
“The latter of these rarities is from Kentucky. One of them had been received several years ago from Dr. S. Brown, of Lexington, now of Orleans; and several others since from Professor Woodhouse. They have a remote resemblance to a small acorn. At the larger end is a small projection resembling a broken foot-stock. At the smaller extremity are six indentations, or orifices, which may be imagined to be the decayed pistils or stigmata of a former blossom. And on the sides are figured fine sharp-pointed surfaces, having a similitude to the quinquepartite calyx of a plant. It may be doubted whether this is of animal or vegetable origin. It also may be reasonably supposed to be a species of echinus.
“Both the specimens are silicious and insoluble in acids.”—Cramer.