Afloat on the Ohio / An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

At Leavenworth, the river, which has been flowing northwest for thirty miles, takes a sudden sweep to the southwest, and thenceforward we have a rapid current. However, we need still to ply our blades, for there is a stiff head-wind, with an eager nip in it, to escape which we seek the lee as often as may be, and bask in the undisturbed sunlight. Right glad we were, at luncheon-time, to find a sheltered nook amidst a heap of boulders on the Kentucky shore, and to sit on the sun-warmed sand and drink hot tea by the side of a camp-fire, rejoicing in the kindness of Providence.

There are few houseboats, since leaving Louisville; to-day we have seen but three or four—one of them merrily going up stream, under full sail. Islands, too, are few—the Upper and Lower Blue River, a pretty pair, being the first we have met since Sunday. The water is falling, it now being three or four feet below the stage of a few days since, as can readily be seen from the broad dado of mud left on the leaves of willows and sycamores; while the drift, recently an ever-present feature of the current, is rapidly lodging in the branches of the willows and piling up against the sand-spits; and scrawling snags and bobbing sawyers are catching on the bars, and being held for the next "fresh."

There is little life along shore, in these lower waters. There are two lines of ever-widening, willowed beach of rock and sand or mud; above them, perpendicular walls of clay, which edge either rocky terraces backed by grand sweeps of convoluted hills,—sometimes wooded to the top, and sometimes eroded into palisades,—or wide-stretching bottoms given over to small farms or maybe dense tangles of forest.

In the midst of this world of shade, nestle the whitewashed cabins of the small tillers; but though they swarm with children, it is not often that the inhabitants appear by the riverside. We catch a glimpse of them when landing on our petty errands, we now and then see a houseboater at his nets, and in the villages a few lackadaisical folk are lounging by the wharf; but as a rule, in these closing days of our pilgrimage, we glide through what is almost a solitude. The imagination has not to go far afield, to rehabilitate the river as it appeared to the earliest voyagers.

Late in the afternoon, as usual wishing water and milk, we put ashore in Indiana, where a rustic landing indicated a settlement of some sort, although our view was confined to a pretty, wooded bank, and an unpainted warehouse at the top of the path. It was a fertile bottom, a half-mile wide, and stretching a mile or two along the river. Three neat houses, one of them of logs, constituted the village, and all about were grain-fields rippled into waves by the northwest breeze.

The first house, a quarter of a mile inland, I reached by a country roadway; it proved to be the postoffice of Point Sandy. Chickens clucked around me, a spaniel came fawning for attention, a tethered cow mooed plaintively, but no human being was visible. At last I discovered a penciled notice pinned to the horse-block, to the effect that the postmaster had gone into Alton (five miles distant) for the day; and should William Askins call in his absence, the said Askins was to remember that he promised to call yesterday, but never came; and now would he be kind enough to come without fail to-morrow before sundown, or the postmaster would be obliged to write that letter they had spoken about. It was quite evident that Askins had not called; for he surely would not have left that mysterious notice sticking there, for all Point Sandy to read and gossip over. It is to be hoped that there will be no bloodshed over this affair; across the way, in Kentucky, there would be no doubt as to the outcome.

I looked at Boss, and wondered whether in Indiana it were felony to milk another man's cow in his absence, with no ginger jar at hand, into which to drop a compensatory dime. Then I saw that she was dry, and concluded that to attempt it might be thought a violation of ethics. The postmaster's well, too, proved to be a cistern,—pardon the Hibernicism,—and so I went farther.

The other frame house also turned out to be deserted, but evidently only for the day, for the lilac bushes in the front yard were hung with men's flannel shirts drying in the sun. A buck goat came bleating toward me, with many a flourish of his horns, from which it was plain to be seen why the family wash was not spread upon the grass. From here I followed a narrow path through a wheat-field, the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my right to knock at the door; but, flourishing my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to take refuge in the hen-coop. To my summons at the portal, there came no response, save the mewing of the cat within. It was clear that the people of Point Sandy were not at home, to-day.

I would have retreated to the boat, but, chancing to glance up at the overhanging hills which edge in the bottom, saw two men sitting on a boulder in front of a rude log hut on the brink of a cliff, curiously watching my movements on the plain. Thankful, now, that the postmaster's cow had gone dry, and that these observant mountaineers had not had an opportunity to misinterpret my conduct, I at once hurried toward the hill, hopeful that at the top some bovine might be housed, whose product could lawfully be acquired. But after a long and laborious climb, over shifting stones and ragged ledges, I was met with the discouraging information that the only cow in these parts was Hawkins' cow, and Hawkins was the postmaster,—"down yon, whar yew were a-read'n' th' notices on th' hoss-block." Neither had they any water, up there on the cliff-top—"don' use very much, stranger; 'n' what we do, we done git at Smithfield's, in th' log-house down yon, 'n' I reck'n their cistern's done gone dry, anyhow!"