When we are out here in the swim, the drift-strewn stream has a more peaceful aspect than when looked at from the shore. Instead of rushing past as if dooming to destruction everything else afloat, the debris falls behind, when we row, for our progress is then the greater. Dropping our oars, our gruesome companions on the river pass us slowly, for they catch less wind than we; and then, so silent the steady march of all, we seem to be drifting up-stream, until on glancing at the shore the hills appear to be swiftly going down and the willow fringes up,—until the sight makes us dizzy, and we are content to be at quits with these optical delusions.
We no longer have the beach of gravel or sand, or strip of clay knee-deep in mud. The water, now twelve feet higher than before the rise, has covered all; it is, indeed, swaying the branches of sycamores and willows, and meeting the edges of the corn-fields of venturesome farmers who have cultivated far down, taking the risk of a "June fresh." Often could we, if we wished, row quite within the bulwark of willows, where a week ago we would have ventured to camp.
The Kentucky side, to-day, from Covington out, has been thoroughly rustic, seldom broken by settlement; while Ohio has given us a succession of suburban towns all the way out to North Bend (482 miles), which is a small manufacturing place, lying on a narrow bottom at the base of a convolution of gentle, wooded hills. One sees that Cincinnati has a better and a broader base; North Bend was handicapped by nature, in its early race.
When Ohio came into the Union (1803), it was specified that the boundary between her and Indiana should be a line running due north from the mouth of the Big Miami. But the latter, an erratic stream, frequently the victim of floods, comes wriggling down to the Ohio through a broad bottom grown thick to willows, and in times of high water its mouth is a changeable locality. The boundary monument is planted on the meridian of what was the mouth, ninety-odd years ago; but to-day the Miami breaks through an opening in the quivering line of willow forest, a hundred yards eastward (487 miles).
Garrison Creek is a modest Kentucky affluent, just above the Miami's mouth. At the point, a group of rustics sat on a log at the bank-top, watching us approach. Landing in search of milk and water, I was taken by one of them in a lumbersome skiff a short distance up the creek, and presented to his family. They are genuine "crackers," of the coarsest type—tall, lean, sallow, fishy-eyed, with tow-colored hair, an ungainly gait, barefooted, and in nondescript clothing all patches and tatters. The tousle-headed woman, surrounded by her copies in miniature, keeps the milk neatly, in an outer dairy, perhaps because of market requirements; but in the crazy old log-house, pigs and chickens are free comers, and the cistern from which they drink is foul. Here in this damp, low pocket of a bottom, annually flooded to the door-sill, in the midst of vegetation of the rankest order, and quite unheedful of the simplest of sanitary laws, these yellow-skinned "crackers" are cradled, wedded, and biered. And there are thousands like unto them, for we are now in the heart of the "shake" country, and shall hear enough of the plague through the remainder of our pilgrimage. As for ourselves, we fear not, for it is not until autumn that danger is imminent, and we are taking due precaution under the Doctor's guidance.
Two miles beyond, is the Indiana town of Lawrenceburg, with the unkempt aspect so common to the small river places; and two miles still farther, on a Kentucky bottom, Petersburg, whose chiefest building, as viewed from the stream, is a huge distillery. On a high sandy terrace, a mile or so below, we pitch our nightly camp. All about are willows, rustling musically in the evening breeze, and, soaring far aloft, the now familiar sycamores. Nearly opposite, in Indiana, the little city of Aurora is sparkling with points of light, strains of dance music reach us over the way, and occasional shouts and gay laughter; while now and then, in the thickening dusk of the long day, we hear skiffs go chucking by from Petersburg way, and the gleeful voices of men and women doubtless being ferried to the ball.
Near Warsaw, Ky., Saturday, May 26th.—Our first mosquito appeared last night, but he was easily slaughtered. It has been a comfort to be free, thus far, from these pests of camp life. We had prepared for them by laying in a bolt of black tarlatan at Wheeling,—greatly superior this, to ordinary white mosquito bar,—but thus far it has remained in the shopman's wrapper.
The fog this morning was of the heaviest. At 4 o'clock we were awakened by the sharp clanging of a pilot's signal bell, and there, poking her nose in among our willows, a dozen feet from the tent, was the "Big Sandy," one of the St. Louis & Cincinnati packet line. She had evidently lost her bearings in the mist; but with a deal of ringing, and a noisy churning of the water by the reversed paddle-wheel, pulled out and disappeared into the gloom.
The river, still rising, is sweeping down an ever-increasing body of rubbish. Islands and beaches, away back to the Alleghanies on the main stream, and on thousands of miles of affluents, are yielding up those vast rafts of drift-wood and fallen timber, which have continually impressed us on our way with a sense of the enormous wastage everywhere in progress—necessary, of course, in view of the prohibitive cost of transportation. Nevertheless, one thinks pitifully of the tens of thousands who, in congested districts, each winter suffer unto death for want of fuel; and here is this wealth of forest debris, the useless plaything of the river. But not only wreckage of this character is borne upon the flood. The thievish river has picked up valuable saw-logs that have run astray, lumber of many sorts, boxes, barrels—and now and then the body of a cow or horse that has tumbled to its death from some treacherous clay-cliff or rocky terrace. The beaches have been swept clean by the rushing flood, of whatever lay upon them, be it good or bad, for the great scavenger exercises no discretion.