Our voyage had begun. We were afloat in the grasp of the river, and for the time need only to fold our arms and gaze at the changing vistas of forest-clad hills on either bank, past which the current swept us along at more than post speed.
Before the noon meal we had passed in turn the important shipping town of McKeesport, at the mouth of the Youghiogheny, and the hillside ravine near Turtle Creek, where, within a gunshot of the river bank, the British General Braddock met with his disastrous defeat at the hands of the French and Indians, and where he whose life was to prove so precious to his countrymen came so near to losing it beneath the edge of the tomahawk.
In the midst of our meal we came so close under the heights of Pittsburg that I had need to leave the table to take advantage of a slant in the current which would bring us shoreward. Before the others joined me, I had the boat fast alongside the warehouse wharf where I hoped to find the chest of clothes I had sent on from Washington. My expectations were not of the firmest, for I knew the Cumberland Pike to be quite as miry as the Philadelphia road. It had been, indeed, a close shave, for on inquiring of the warehouse keeper, I learned that my box had come down from Redstone by skiff only the previous evening.
We had no letters to deliver in Pittsburg, and no desire either to wade the unpaved streets or to linger beneath a sky whose shower of soot bore out only too well the boast of the townsfolk that good coal could be bought in their streets at five cents a bushel. For my part, I would prefer to pay more for wood fires, and escape the smearing of house and garments with lampblack. However, the residents may consider this inconvenience offset by their numerous social and cultural advantages, which are unequalled among all our trans-Alleghany towns, unless it may be at Lexington or Cincinnati.
As we put off again into the stream, I pointed out the site of Fort Pitt, built by the British to replace the French Fort Duquesne. But a storm cloud drove down over the Pittsburg hills, and Alisanda hastened to withdraw with her uncle into the cabin to escape the April rain which soon poured upon us in torrents. It was not, as I had hoped, a mere squall. With the passing of the first roaring wind gusts that rocked our heavy craft, the rain settled into a steady drizzle, which obscured river and banks for the rest of the afternoon, and sheeted us in like a black pall throughout the night.
With the nightfall, trusting to the height of the flood to carry us over all shoals and rocks, I made no attempt to effect a landing or to tie up to the half-submerged willows along the bank. We had wood enough aboard to last for three days or more, and our fireplace, with its pots and ranger, saved the necessity of a shore camp to prepare food.
As there was no call for Don Pedro to suffer a needless wetting, I argued that I could not trust him on watch so dark a night,—which was no more than the truth of the matter. My supper was brought to me in the prow by Chita, and her peppery stew was doubly welcome after my afternoon's drenching. She carried back with her instructions to obtain one of my dry suits from Don Pedro and take it through to the kitchen. About midnight, the boat chancing to swing about stern foremost in the current, I left my watch long enough to shift into dry garments before a crackling fire.
With the first gray glimmer of dawn through the breaking rain clouds, Don Pedro came to take my post, and Chita slipped out in her nightshift to set on her coffee pot. By the time I had breakfasted, the sun had dispelled the mists, and I saw that we were already in the Long Reach, having passed during the night by Steubenville and Wheeling. It was a run possible only at the height of the Spring fresh.
Upon my inquiry, Don Pedro informed me that he did not wish to stop at Marietta, that prim New England village planted by Rufus Putnam and his fellow Yankees on the site of Old Wyandot Town. He had, however, a letter to deliver to Mr. Harmon Blennerhasset, owner of an island some fourteen or fifteen miles below Marietta. So, having made a rough calculation of the speed of the current, I went in to my bunk, after explaining that they need not waken me before midday, unless the boat tended to leave the current.
Sharp upon the noon hour I was roused by the don, and informed that we had already passed Marietta, some five miles back. His description of the Muskingum River and the block houses and other buildings of the town would have convinced me that it was indeed Marietta, had I not known that it was the only settlement of the size between Wheeling and Gallipolis. What was more, I recognized the greater width of the river bottoms, which were now flooded to the higher levels, the many islands which divided the current, and the lowness of the densely wooded hills.