Falls of the Ohio

“ His log fort on Corn Island, in the midst of the rapids, served as a base of military operations, and was the nucleus of American settlement, although later the inhabitants moved to the mainland, and founded Louisville.
The falls at Louisville are the only considerable obstruction to Ohio-River navigation. At an average stage, the descent is but twenty-seven feet in two-and-a-half miles; in high flood, the rapids degenerate into merely swift water, without danger to descending craft. ”

“ Of course the rivers which flow into the Ohio—the Monongahela, Kenhawa, Licking, Sandy, Kentucky, Green, Cumberland, and Tennessee—are rapid, and abounding in cataracts and falls, which, towards their sources, greatly impede navigation. The western side of this Valley is, also, hilly for a considerable distance from the Ohio, but towards its western limit, it subsides to a remarkably level region. ”

“ Louisville, Kentucky, was one of the principal points between Pittsburg and New Orleans. Here the placid waters of the beautiful river rushed madly over some ledges of rocks, called the falls of Ohio. Many reshipments in an early day were performed at this point, and if the boat was taken over the falls her pilot for the trip to New Orleans was not considered competent to navigate the falls. Resident pilots, in Louisville, were always employed to perform this task. ”

“ A building has been erected for the instruction of youth, who are at present under the care of a preceptor. The bottom lands on this river are more extensive and of a better quality than those on the Muskingum.
On this river thirty miles from Athens and five miles beyond the line of the Ohio company's purchase, are falls commodiously situated for any kind of water works. The descent of the water is nine feet, and the stream never fails at any season of the year. Above the falls, the land on both sides the river, is level and rich. ”

“ The rapids at the lower end of the city cover the whole width of the river, and go down twenty-six feet in two miles, making a series of foaming cascades in ordinary stages of water, but being almost entirely obliterated in times of freshet, when the steamboats can pass down them. A long canal cut through the rocks provides safe navigation around them. An expedition of thirteen families of Virginia, under Colonel George Rogers Clarke, floated down the Ohio on flatboats in 1778, and halting at the falls, settled there, at first on an island, but afterwards on the southern shore. ”

“ Four miles from the falls we came to Graham’s station, which is a fine populous settlement, extending about three miles along the left bank of the river, from West creek to Wolfe’s farm house, which is charmingly situated on a cliff. The Ohio side opposite is also well settled. ”

“ They endure a little longer on horizontal beds, which must be cut back perhaps many miles up stream before the fall disappears, than on tilted beds, which must be cut down a few thousand feet at most to reduce them to base level. Falls on tilted beds are therefore of briefer duration than on horizontal beds, and are at any time proportionately rarer. On the headwater branches of a river where youthful features such as steep slope and sudden fall remain after the main river has a well-matured channel, we sometimes find many water-falls, as in the still young branches of the old Ohio. ”

“ We are idling, despite the knowledge that on turning every big bend we are getting farther and farther south, and mid-June on the Lower Ohio is apt to be sub-tropical. But the sinking sun gives us a shadowy right bank, and that is most welcome. The current is only spasmodically good. Every night the river falls from three to six inches, and there are long stretches of slack-water. The steamers pick their way carefully ”

“ La Salle, prince of French explorers and coureurs de bois, standing at the Falls of [pg xii] the Ohio, and seeking to fathom the geographical mysteries of the continent; French and English fur-traders, in bitter contention for the patronage of the red man; borderers of the rival nations, shedding each other's blood in protracted partisan wars; surveyors like Washington and Boone and the McAfees, clad in fringed hunting-shirts and leathern leggings, mapping out future states; hardy frontiersmen, fighting, hunting, or farming, as occasion demanded ”

“ We catch sight for a moment, through a cloud crevasse, of Ceredo, the last town in West Virginia—a small saw-milling community stuck upon the edge of the clay cliff, with the broad level bottom stretching out behind like a prairie. A giant railway bridge here spans the Ohio—a weird, impressive thing, as we sweep under it in the swirling current, and crane our necks to see the great stone piers lose themselves in the cloud. ”

“ With a cold headwind on the starboard quarter, we hug the lee of the Ohio shore. The river is well up in the willows now. Crowding Pilgrim as closely as we may, within the narrow belt of unruffled water, our oars are swept by their bending boughs, which lightly tremble on the surface of the flood. ”

“ Greed of the great round dollar has been the commanding passion, and nowhere has it burned more fiercely. All the crimes, treacheries, deceptions, and frauds practiced under the sun have been repeated on the Ohio between Pittsburg and Cairo. Some, perhaps unknown elsewhere, have here been committed. But here, too, that old-time clear love of living for life’s sake only, the thing which makes sailors sing the world over, was deeply felt. In its lower extremities the river reaches practically southern climes while its northern arms reach out into New York and Pennsylvania. ”

“ Nature cast, with a lavish hand, her waters where they would count tremendously in the opening of this continent: for the waters that fell here flowed into the West and the social movement was to be westward. The Ohio, more than any river, was to influence the flood-tides of immigration. ”

“ There is no other valley in the world that is to be found, explored, conquered, reconquered [Pg 104] and settled like the Ohio Basin. What a line of daring voyageurs that was from La Salle to Céloron and Washington, who feasted their eyes upon the virgin beauty of La Belle Rivière, from their heavily-loaded, long canoes; in these craft came the explorers of Ohio and Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois; they ploughed the waters of the Muskingum far back in the distant day when those waters were, as the name implies, clear as an elk’s eye ”

“ To the left lies a broad stretch of gravel strand, beyond which is the narrow water fed by the overflow of the dam; to the right, the broad steamboat channel rolls between us and the Ohio hills, while the far-reaching vista downstream is a feast of shade and tint, by land and water, with the lights and smoke of New Cumberland and Sloan's Station faintly discernible near the horizon. All about us lies a beautiful world of woodland. ”

“ The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing their livelihood must be playing a losing game.
There are many beautiful islands on these lower reaches of the river. We followed the narrow channel between Little Hurricane and the Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or three miles, with both banks a dense tangle of drift-wood, weeds and vines. ”

“ Pilgrim, however, cannot hang up at the levee with any comfort to her crew; it is necessary, with evening at hand, and a thunder-storm angrily rising over the Pittsburg hills, to get out of this grimy pool, flanked about with iron and coal yards, chimney stacks, and a forest of shipping, and to quickly seek the open country lower down on the Ohio. The lock-keepers appreciated our situation. Two or three sturdy, courteous men helped us carry our cargo, by an intricate official route, over coils of rope and chains, over lines of shafting, and along dizzy walks overhanging the yawning basin ”

“ In the middle of November, with an interpreter and four attendants, and Christopher Gist as a guide, he left Will's Creek, and following the Indian trace through forest solitudes, gloomy with the fallen leaves, and solemn sadness of late autumn, across mountains, rocky ravines, and streams, through sleet and snows, he rode in nine days to the fork of the Ohio. How lonely was the spot, where, so long unheeded of men, the rapid Allegheny met nearly at right angles 'the deep and still' water of the Monongahela! At once Washington foresaw the destiny of the place. ”

“ To our minds, the manner of our going should as nearly as possible be that of the pioneer himself—hence our skiff, and our nightly camp in primitive fashion.
The trip was successful, whatever the point of view. Physically, those six weeks "Afloat on the Ohio" were a model outing—at times rough, to be sure, but exhilarating, health-giving, brain-inspiring. The Log of the "Pilgrim" seeks faintly to outline our experiences, but no words can adequately describe the wooded hill-slopes which day by day girt us in; the romantic ravines which corrugate the rim of the Ohio's basin ”

“ On an inland river, where the winds and the amount of rainfall at any time were very uncertain, it must have been a most difficult thing to cope successfully with low water and shifting sand bars and other innumerable obstacles to navigation in the Ohio. ”

“ These delivering their waters to the great streams, cause the latter not merely to rise to a surprising height, but to overflow their banks, wherever the land is low. On such occasions, the Ohio itself presents a splendid, and at the same time an appalling spectacle; but when its waters mingle with those of the Mississippi, then, kind reader, is the time to view an American flood in all its astonishing magnificence. ”

“ I pointed at the swollen, turbid current of the Monongahela, swirling high along its banks. "As you see, the river is in full flood. It is what the rivermen term the Spring fresh. The Ohio now runs no less swiftly, at times fully eight miles an hour. I should advise you to choose a flat, because it will travel little less speedily than a bateau, and with its house, will prove a far more comfortable craft for so long a voyage." ”

“ One of these spread upward from the neighborhood of Akron to the east and west of where Cleveland stands; but by far the largest flooded nearly all that part of Ohio which the glaciers failed to cover, from beyond where Pittsburg is to where Cincinnati is. At the last point a mighty ice dam formed every winter till as the climate grew warmer and the ice thawed more and more, the waters burst the dam, and poured their tide down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, while those of the northern lake rushed through the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie, and both lakes disappeared forever. ”

“ There is not a stream upon the continent which, for the same distance, rolls onward so calmly, and smoothly, and peacefully as the Ohio. Danger rarely visits its tranquil bosom, except from the storms of heaven or the reckless folly of man, and hardly a river in the world can vie with it in safety, utility, or beauty. Though subject to rapid and great elevations and depressions, its current is generally uniform, never furious. The forest-trees which skirt its banks are the largest in North America, while the variety is endless ”

“ Some of the poles did not fit closely together, leaving cracks of a quarter of an inch or so, through which came welcome fresh air, and also the subdued hum of the village noises. He heard indistinctly the barking of dogs, and the chatter of old squaws scolding, but he paid little heed to them because he felt now the sudden rush of a terrible despair.
The Ohio had been the great wall between Paul and his kind, and with the steady march northward, through the forests and over the little prairies, still another wall, equally great, had been reared. ”

“ Stopping over night at the Virginia House, in that jumping off place of Western Virginia, Wheeling, some years ago, I had the pleasure or pastime of meeting several of the big guns of the nation, on their way from Washington city, home. It was in August, I think, when, as is most generally the case, the Ohio river gets monstrous low and feeble; when all of the large steamers are past getting up so far, and travelling down the river becomes quite amusing to amateurs, and particularly tedious and monotonous to business people, bound home. ”

“ The picturesque calcareous cliffs on the west banks, display a novel and attractive line of river scenery. The Ohio had, from its commencement, well sustained the propriety of its ancient appellation of the Beautiful River; but it here assumed something more than beautiful—it was majestic. Let it be borne in mind that this stream, in the course of some seven or eight hundred miles flow from Pittsburgh to Shawneetown, had been swelled on the right and left hand by the Scioto, the Muskingum, the Kentucky, the Miami, Green River, Wabash, and other rivers of scarcely inferior size. ”

“ Across the Ohio, through the blinding storm, the dark outlines of Pittsburg and Allegheny City are spangled with electric lamps which throw toward us long, shimmering lances of light, in which the mighty stream, gray, mysterious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging onward with majestic sweep. ”