Muskingum River

“ Open savannahs commence as far east as the sources of the Muskingum. Like the plain itself, those savannahs expand to the westward, and on the Illinois open into immense prairies. This valley may be regarded as a great plain inclining from the Apalachian system of the north-west, obliquely and deeply cut by the Ohio and its numerous confluents, into chasms from an elevation of four hundred feet to nearly the level of the streams. On the higher parts of the valley, the banks of the river rise by bold acclivities which wear almost a mountainous aspect. ”

“ Under power conferred by an act of the general assembly of Ohio, approved March 9th, 1836, the authorities of the state, between 1836 and 1840, constructed a series of locks and dams on the Muskingum river between Marietta and Zanesville. ”

“ It occurs about one mile below the town of Granville, Licking county, Ohio, upon a high and beautifully rounded spur of land, which projects boldly into the delightful valley of “Raccoon creek,” a stream which, in conjunction with the “South fork,” forms Licking creek or river, the principal p099 tributary of the Muskingum. The hill or headland is one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet in height; and the effigy rests upon its very brow, conforming to its longitudinal as well as lateral curve. Its form is accurately indicated in the plan. It is known in the vicinity as “the Alligator;” ”

“ CHAPTER VIII—THE SALT SPRINGS—A STARTLING DISCOVERY Besides the much traveled path extending south from the river on which the cabin of the youthful pioneers was situated, to the main branch of the Muskingum, there was another thoroughfare of the Indians in the vicinity. The general direction of its course was east and west. This trail was not used a great deal, but it was, for the most part, along its route that the two boys had first made their way into the Ohio wilds two years before. ”

“ None of these, however, had their residence in the lower Muskingum region, and it was only occasionally resorted to by them, when upon their hunting 40expeditions. Then, too, the people who proposed making a settlement beyond the Ohio were very naturally influenced by the proximity of well established stations upon the east and south of the river; they doubtless preferred the Virginians rather than the Kentuckians, as neighbors. The lower Scioto offered no more alluring an aspect than the lower Muskingum. The best bodies of lands on each river are fifty miles from their mouth. ”

“ The two larger squares are covered with a close turf, and still preserve their symmetry. Indeed, no erections of earth alone could surpass them in regularity. They are perfectly level on the top, except where some uprooted tree has displaced the earth.
There is a passage or gateway one hundred and fifty feet wide, in the middle of the left wall of this enclosure, on the side next the Muskingum. Leading from it towards the river, and at right angles to the embankment, is the “Sacra Via,” a graded or covered way of singular construction. ”

“ Grandest of American rivers though it is, you will be glad to get away from it to a noble stream like the Columbia, to a headstrong flood like the Missouri, or an inland sea like the Mississippi; on them at least you can draw a full breath and speak aloud without a feeling that the silent mountains may fall on you or the raging river swallow you up.
In the vast territory lying between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean the rivers are fast being harnessed for a work that will one day make the most barren spots fertile. ”

“ The musk-rat is the beaver of the settled States. Their number has even increased within a few years in this vicinity. Among the rivers which empty into the Merrimack, the Concord is known to the boatmen as a dead stream. The Indians are said to have called it Musketaquid, or Prairie River. Its current being much more sluggish, and its water more muddy than the rest, it abounds more in fish and game of every kind. ”

“ Irrigation is claiming every year more of the flow of Western rivers. Even the tricksy old Missouri is contributing somewhat to irrigation, but in the queerest possible way.
With all its other eccentricities, the Missouri River leaks badly; for you know there are leaky rivers as well as leaky boats. The government [Pg 63] engineers once measured the flow of the Missouri away up in Montana, and again some hundred miles further down stream. ”

“ Away up here in the mountains, the Missouri, which subsequently becomes one of the most treacherous and destructive rivers in the universe, runs through picturesque cañons and over great gorges of rock, finally leaving the State a great river, though still insignificant in comparison with the volume it is to assume, and the drainage work it is to accomplish farther away from the mighty hills among which it had its source. ”

“ At Kushkies, about sixteen miles up, two branches spread opposite ways—one interlocks with French creek and Cherage, the other westward with Muskingum and Cuyahoga. On this are many salt springs about thirty-five miles above the forks. It is canoeable about twenty miles farther. The eastern branch is less considerable, but both are very slow, spreading through a very rich, level country, full of swamps and ponds which prevent a good portage, but will no doubt in future ages be fit to open a canal between the waters of the Ohio and Lake Erie. ”

“ It occupies its place, a queer, squat sentry, standing midway between the cattle ford and the newer log wagon-bridge lower down the river toward its mouth, where it joins the giant Missouri some two 10 hundred miles distant. It backs into the brush fringing the wood-lined river bank, and is dangerously sheltered from the two great Indian Reservations on the other side of the river. Dangerously, because it is at all times dangerous to live adjacent to woods when so near such a restless race as the Indians on the Rosebud and the Pine Ridge Reservations. ”

“ The great ramparts of the prairie are a magnificent sight on a clear day. Flat and smooth as any billiard-table stretched this silent, mysterious muskeg, already green and fair to the eye, an alluring pasture to the unwary. An experienced eye might have judged it too green—too alluring. Could a more perfect trap be devised by evil human ingenuity than this? Think for one instant of a bottomless pit of liquid soil, absorbing in its peculiar density. Think of all the horrors of a quicksand, which, embracing, sucks down into its cruel bosom the despairing victim of its insatiable greed. ”

“ It is practically treeless on the 270 river side. We ascended it through a steep gorge washed by a spring torrent. Strewn with bowlders and hung with bushes and an occasional thicket of elms and oaks, the path was rough but sure. From the heights above, the dark valley lay spread before us like a map. Ten miles away, to our left, a splash of white in a great field of green marked the location of Lone Rock village; five miles to the right, a spire or two rising above the trees indicated where Muscoda lay far back from the river reaches ”

“ The fall being four inches to the mile, the lands just above the cut-off are made higher and above overflow, whereas just below, the lands are overflowed or become liable to overflow. The improvement of the Mississippi River itself for commercial purposes, as well as the protection of the lands, is dependent upon the building of the levees, for the levees of course confine the water within its banks, and give not only a greater volumn of water, but greater velocity for scouring purposes, which scours out the sand bars that are formed continually on the river. ”

“ The banks of the stream were lined with the villages of the Indians. Their wigwams were of a great variety of structure. The scenes presented were astonishing in their wild and picturesque aspect. Crowds of weird-like savages would often be collected on the bluffs, watching the appalling phenomenon of the passing steamer.
The Missouri is different, perhaps, from any other river in the world. Its boiling, turbid waters rush impetuously on, in an unceasing current, for hundreds of leagues, with scarcely a cove, an eddy, or any resting place where a canoe can be tranquilly moored. ”

“ This is the case likewise with the Rhine and the Moselle; the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. The Upper Mississippi is a transparent stream, but assumes the color of the Missouri upon joining that river, the mud of which is as copious as the water can hold in suspension, and of a white soapy hue. The Ohio brings into it a flood of a greenish color. ”

“ Some of the young captive wives refused to be comforted, and, using that sagacity they had acquired during their sojourn with the red-men, managed to escape from their white friends, and, joining their swarthy lovers, fled with them to the forest.
The American wilderness never before presented such a spectacle as was exhibited on the banks of the Muskingum. It was no longer a hostile camp, but a stage on which human nature was displaying its most noble, attractive traits ”

“ But if the river, as it often does, should first throw up a bar out in the channel and then gradually fill up the space between that and your land until finally the current changed and left the island thus formed joined to your land, you would have no claim to any land thus formed. It would belong to the county, and could be surveyed and sold to the highest bidder, and the money it brought would go to the school fund.
The Missouri River is a malicious stream, and if it ever comes to judgment, will have a lot to answer for. ”

“ Cottonwood, willow, cedar and walnut trees grow upon the banks that are for a time left undisturbed, but years later the eroding current returns to undermine these banks, the trees fall in and are carried down stream as snags (or “sawyers”) , which are especially dangerous to navigation. The variation of level is great and it varies greatly in different parts of the river’s course: it is about 19 ft. at Kansas City, about 25 ft. at St Charles, Missouri, and about 8 ft. at Fort Benton, Montana. It is estimated that the Missouri’s average discharge per second amounts to about 94,000 cub. ”

“ The Mississippi river is the greatest waterway in the world. It is the middle thread of a system embracing more than sixteen thousand miles of practically339 navigable rivers, bayous and creeks. In its ramifications it drains no less than twenty-eight states of the Union. In its course it flows from the Rocky Mountains on the one side, the Alleghenies on the other, and the Cumberland, the Ozark, and the Missouri ranges, into a single great stream. ”

“ There are now 1,538 miles of levees on both sides of the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau to the passes. These levees, of course, are still inadequate to the security of the planters against these inundations. Carrying 406 million tons of mud a year, the river becomes a dangerous stream subject to change, abandoning its old bed to cut for itself a new channel, transferring property from one State to another, isolating cities and leaving once useful levees marooned in the landscape like old Indian mounds or overgrown intrenchments. ”

“ On the State road, west of the Muskingum, are rich and moderate swelling hills. On the northern side of the road they gradually flatten off almost to a level, and are clothed with excellent timber, consisting principally of oak, hickery, beach, black walnut, blue and black ash, mulberry, elm, buckeye, cherry, and gum. The soil is deep and rich. This description of land extends from the head waters of the Muskingum, to the waters of Scioto and Miami's, and northward to Lake Erie with little variation. Only a few large hills and ridges are distributed over a great extent of country. ”

“ There are between eight and nine hundred of these people living along Grand river and its tributaries, but many of their most populous villages are on land now belonging to the United States.
This river is the largest stream that waters the west part of the peninsula of Michigan, being two hundred and seventy miles in length, its windings included, and navigable two hundred and forty miles for batteaux; receiving in its course a great number of tributary streams, among which are Portage, Red Cedar, Looking Glass, Soft Maple, Muscota, Flat, Rouge and Thorn Apple rivers. ”

“ At 17 m. is the YELLOWSTONE RIVER, the largest tributary of the Missouri, and an important factor in the history of exploration, settlement, and development of trade in Montana. Here, where the river joins the Missouri just within the North Dakota border, the valley once was a hunting paradise for the upper Missouri Indians, but fur traders, trappers, hunters, and settlers gave little thought to conservation, and the big game is now extinct. The three-million-dollar irrigation project completed in 1909 by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation has brought the region the title of Prosperous Valley. ”

“ Of the valleys of the rivers last enumerated, viz. those north of the Arkansa and tributary to the Mississippi, it is observable that they are uniformly possessed of a rich soil, but owing to the excessive floods occasionally brought down through them from {217} the hills and mountains, their cultivation is very precarious. The valley of White river, and those of some few others, are in many places elevated above the reach of the highest freshets, and are not altogether subject to this inconvenience. ”