Four Months in a Sneak-Box / A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico

by Nathaniel H. Bishop

The rapid current had carried me twenty-two miles in four hours and a half.

Not having slept for thirty-six hours, or eaten since morning, I was well prepared physically to retire at an early hour. A few minutes sufficed to securely stake my boat, to prevent her being carried off by a sudden rise in the river during my slumbers; a few moments more were occupied in arranging the thin hair cushions and a thick cotton coverlet upon the floor of the boat. The bag which contained my wardrobe, consisting of a blue flannel suit, &c., served for a pillow. A heavy shawl and two thin blankets furnished sufficient covering for the bed. Bread and butter, with Shakers' peach-sauce, and a generous slice of Wilson's compressed beef, a tin of water from the icy reservoir that flowed past my boat and within reach of my arm, all contributed to furnish a most satisfactory meal, and a half hour afterwards, when a soft, damp fog settled down upon the land, the atmosphere became so quiet that the rubbing of every ice-cake against the shore could be distinctly heard as I sank into a sweeter slumber than I had ever experienced in the most luxurious bed of the daintiest of guest-chambers, for my apartment, though small, was comfortable, and with the hatch securely closed, I was safe from invasion by man or beast, and enjoyed the well-earned repose with a full feeling of security. The owl softly winnowed the air with his feathery pinions as he searched for his prey along the beach, sending forth an occasional to-hoot! as he rested for a moment on the leafless branches of an old tree, reminding me to take a peep at the night, and to inquire "what its signs of promise" were.

All was silence and security; but even while I thought that here at least Nature ruled supreme, Art sent to my listening ear, upon the dense night air, the shrill whistle of the steam-freighter, trying to enter the ice-pack several miles down the river.

So the peaceful night wore away, and in the early dawn, enveloped in a thick fog, I hastily dispatched a cold breakfast, and at half-past eight o'clock pushed off into the floating ice, which became more and more disintegrated and less troublesome as the day advanced. The use of the soft bituminous coal in the towns along the river, and also by the steamboats navigating it, filled the valley with clouds of smoke. These clouds rested upon everything. Your five senses were fully aware of the presence of the disagreeable, impalpable something surrounding you. Eyes, ears, taste, touch, and smell, each felt the presence. Smoky towns along the banks gave smoky views. Smoky chimneys rose high above the smoky foundries and forges, where smoke-begrimed men toiled day and night in the smoky atmosphere. Ah, how I sighed for a glimpse of God's blessed sunlight! and even while I gazed saw in memory the bright pure valleys of the north-east; the sparkling waters of lakes George and Champlain, and the majestic scenery, with the life-giving atmosphere, of the Adirondacks. The contrast seemed to increase the smoke, and no cheerfulness was added to the scene by the dismal- looking holes in the mountain-sides I now passed. They were the entrances to mines from which the bituminous coal was taken. Some of them were being actively worked, and long, trough-like shoots were used to send the coal by its own gravity from the entrance of the mine to the hold of the barge or coal-ark at the steam-boat landing. Some of these mines were worked by three men and a horse. The horse drew the coal on a little car along the horizontal gallery from the heart of the mountain to the light of day.

During the second day the current of the Ohio became less violent. I fought a passage among the ice-cakes, and whenever openings appeared rowed briskly along the sides of the chilly raft, with the intent of getting below the frosty zone as soon as possible.

About half-past eight o'clock in the evening, when some distance above King's Creek, the struggling starlight enabled me to push my boat on to a muddy flat, destined soon to be overflowed, but offering me a secure resting-place for a few hours. Upon peeping out of my warm nest under the hatch the next day, it was a cause of great satisfaction to note that a rise in the temperature had taken place, and that the ice was disappearing by degrees.

An open-air toilet, and a breakfast of about the temperature of a family refrigerator, with sundry other inconveniences, made me wish for just enough hot water to remove a little of the begriming results of the smoky atmosphere through which I had rowed.

At eleven o'clock, A. M., the first bridge that spans the Ohio River was passed. It was at Steubenville, and the property of the Pan-Handle Railroad.

Soon after four o'clock in the afternoon the busy manufacturing city of Wheeling, West Virginia, with its great suspension bridge crossing the river to the state of Ohio, loomed into sight.

This city of Wheeling, on the left bank of the river, some eighty miles from Pittsburgh, was the most impressive sight of that dreary day's row. Above its masses of brick walls hung a dense cloud of smoke, into which shot the flames emitted from the numerous chimneys of forges, glass-works, and factories, which made it the busy place it was. Ever and anon came the deafening sound of the trip-hammer, the rap-a-tap-tap of the rivet-headers' tools striking upon the heavy boiler-plates; the screeching of steam-whistles; the babel of men's voices; the clanging of deep-toned bells. Each in turn striking upon my ear, seemed as a whole to furnish sufficient noise-tonic for even the most ardent upholder of that remedy, and to serve as a type for a second Inferno, promising to vie with Dante's own. Yet with all this din and dirt, this ever-present cloud of blackness settling down each hour upon clean and unclean in a sooty coating, I was told that hundreds of families of wealth and refinement, whose circumstances enabled them to select a home where they pleased, lingered here, apparently well satisfied with their surroundings. We are, indeed, the children of habit, and singularly adaptable. It is, perhaps, best that it should be so, but I thought, as I brushed off the thin layer of soot with which the Wheeling cloud of enterprise had discolored the pure white deck of my little craft, that if this was civilization and enterprise, I should rather take a little less of those two commodities and a little more of cleanliness and quiet.