Scioto River

“ The flooded Scioto River, which surged through the streets of Columbus, carried destruction down through farm lands and towns to the Ohio River. Circleville, Chillicothe and Portsmouth, being the principal towns on the river course, suffered most.
At Circleville on March 26th all the bridges had been washed away, and the Scioto River stood three feet higher than ever before. Another rise was promised. The city was cut off from railroad communication, and all trains on roads entering Circleville were annulled. ”

“ The Scioto is about two hundred and fifty yards wide at its mouth, and is navigable for large flats and keel boats [Pg 162] to Chilicothe, the capital of the state, forty-seven miles by land, but between sixty and seventy following the meanders of the river; and about a hundred miles further for batteaux, from whence is a portage of only four miles to Sandusky river which falls into Lake Erie—and near the banks of which the Five Nations have established their principal settlements, called the Sandusky towns. ”

“ Hundreds of men were marooned in factories on the west side, and police and National Guardsmen were making rescues in boats where it was possible. All street car traffic was abandoned. Fifteen hundred homes were flooded.
With a great roar the levee at the foot of Broad Street let go shortly before eleven o'clock, sending down a deluge of water that swelled the Scioto River and covered a great area. Several small buildings collapsed. Just before the break the police ordered all persons in the lowlands to leave their homes quickly and flee for high land. ”

“ Assuming, then, that the lowest terrace, on the Scioto river for example, has been formed since the era of the mounds, we must next consider that the excavating power of the Western rivers diminishes yearly, in proportion as they approximate towards a general level. On the lower Mississippi,—where alone the ancient monuments are sometimes invaded by the water,—the bed of the stream is rising, from the deposition of the materials brought down from the upper tributaries, where the excavating process is going on. ”

“ The great barren in Fayette, Madison, and, we may add, in the counties still north of them, is on land elevated from fifty to one hundred feet above the level of the Scioto river, into which the streams that have their sources in this tract of country generally run. This land lies so level that the waters stand on it too long for grain to thrive equally with grass, unless, indeed, the farmer should dig a long drain, which is easily effected by the plough, with a little assistance from the hoe and the spade. ”

“ It is my object to establish facts, rather than any favourite theory. The difference of latitude between the Ohio river at the mouth of the Scioto, and lake Erie at the mouth of the Maume or Sandusky, is nearly three degrees, and the difference of elevation above the sea is trifling, if any. From the mouth of the Scioto to Columbus, about 90 miles in a direct line, the water, where there is what is commonly called a ripple, runs briskly, and these ripples happen, perhaps, one to a mile; but they are in a sandstone region, and the fall of course is trifling. ”

“ On the northern extremity of this glade, the land is very flat and low, and much of it too wet for cultivation; but where the swells are so high as not to be overflowed in the winter and spring, the soil is rich, and produces large timber. At the distance of 28 miles from Lancaster, about three miles north of the State road, the Pickawa plains begin and extend to the Scioto river. They are several miles in width, not entirely level, but interspersed with gentle swells, which render the prospect the more agreeable. ”

“ Chilicothe, which signifies town in most of the Indian dialects, is most beautifully situated on the right bank of the Scioto, about forty-five miles by land, and nearly seventy following its meanders from the confluence of that river with the Ohio, between Portsmouth and Alexandria. In all that distance the river has a gentle current, and unimpeded navigation for large keels, and other craft for four feet draught of water. ”

“ The Ohio and Erie canal traverses the river-terrace of the Scioto Valley in the vicinity of Chillicothe, where the ancient works of the Mound-Builders are more abundant than in any other area of equal limits hitherto explored. In some cases the canal has been cut through them, and it can scarcely admit of doubt that many interesting traces of the arts and habits of the remarkable people who once filled the long-deserted scene, must have been disclosed to heedless eyes. ”

“ Along with the evidences of a uniformity of system and purpose in those structures, there is also considerable variety in some of their details; and one group may be selected, as on several accounts possessing peculiar features of interest. On the western bank of the Scioto, an ancient enclosure occupies a level terrace immediately above the river. In outline it is nearly square with rounded angles, and consists of a simple embankment, between three and four feet high, unaccompanied by a ditch, or any other feature suggestive of its having been a place of defence. ”

“ A party of thirty-three men was immediately raised to cut off their 077 retreat. These were divided into three companies, of ten men each;—Simon Kenton commanding one,—Baker another, and James Ward the third. The whole party crossed the Ohio river at Limestone, and aimed to strike the Scioto above the mouth of Paint creek. After crossing this latter stream, near where the great road from Maysville to Chillicothe now crosses it, evening came on, and they halted for the night. ”

“ The valley of the river Scioto above Portsmouth, towards Chillicothe, was evidently much frequented by the Indians, who dwelt in inclosures resembling in their formation the square and circular works at Newark, although the embankments were of smaller dimensions. ”

“ Many portages joined the lesser lakes; for example, such as Lake Simcoe, lying between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, or Lake Chautauqua lying between Lake Erie and the Allegheny River. The most common form of portage, however, was the pathway on a river's bank around rapids and waterfalls which impeded the voyageur's way. These were very important on such a turbulent river as the St. Lawrence, and on smaller rivers such as the Scioto or Rivière aux Bœufs which were almost dry in certain places in midsummer. ”

“ The good people of Marietta had soon occasion for all the kindness enjoined by their laws in befriending a hapless colony of Frenchmen, whom certain speculators known as the Scioto Company had lured from their homes in the Old World, and then abandoned to their fate in the heart of the Western wilderness, where they had been promised that they were to find “a climate wholesome and delightful, frost even in winter almost entirely unknown, a river called, by way of eminence, the beautiful and abounding in excellent fish of a vast size ”

“ The sun was sinking, a great fiery ball, in the leaden west, at the close of an autumn day, in the year 1804, when a solitary canoe descended the Scioto, then vastly swollen by recent rains.
The single occupant of the tiny bark was a youth of two and twenty summers, clad in buck-skin. His beardless face gave him an extremely womanish expression. Its smooth surface was yet untanned by the rays of the sun, which fairness of skin proclaimed him a novice in backwoods life.
He plied the oars deftly and noiselessly, and kept in the middle of the stream. ”

“ About the time the bucks quit running, Tontileaugo, his wife and children, Tecaughretanego, his son Nunganey, and myself, left the Wyandot camps at the carrying-place, and crossed the Sciota River at the south end of the glades, and proceeded on about a southwest course to a large creek called Ollentangy, which I believe interlocks with the waters of the Miami, and empties into Sciota on the west side thereof. From the south end of the prairie to Ollentangy there is a large quantity of beech land, intermixed with first-rate land. ”

“ It is the peculiar formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat, and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along the shore that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.
Scituate's history is really a fishing history, for as early as 1633 a fishing station was established here, and in course of time the North River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once the scene of more shipbuilding than any other river in New England. ”

“ This plain is nearly surrounded by the Scioto, which turning suddenly to the N. E. from its general southerly course, leaves the town to the southward of it, and then forms a great bend to the eastward and southward. ”

“ This was a fine position, for one could see Lake Oro, stretched out there blue and sparkling in its ring of forest, and far away to the south, a glittering string of diamonds and turquoise where Lake Simcoe lay smiling in the sun, and now and then, where a clearing opened the view, the blue flash of the river. And there, with the soft rustle of the green and silver canopy above, and around the scent of the clover and the basswood blossoms, Scotty lay with his head in Granny's lap and heard wonderful stories of One who sat on a hill and spoke to the multitude as never man yet spake. ”

“ The circles indicated by the letter G are of much larger dimensions, and are characterized by ditches interior to their walls. They each have a diameter of about two hundred p071 feet, and have elevated embankments constructed interior to the ditch, as seen in the plan. This peculiarity has been already remarked, in some of the works of the Scioto valley.
Upon the lower terraces, towards the point of junction between the South and Raccoon forks, a great number of mounds of various sizes are situated. Some are large, but for the most part they are small. ”

“ John Muir, the great geologist of the Pacific coast, epitomized the valley of the Stikine as “a Yosemite one hundred miles long.” The current of the river is so strong that while it takes a boat three days at full steam to get from Fort Wrangell up to Glenora, the trip back can be made in eight or twelve hours, with the paddle-wheel reversed most of the time, to hold the boat back in its wild flight down stream. It is a most dangerous piece of river navigation, and there have been innumerable accidents to steamboats and canoes. ”

“ Roaming at will among the delightful groves around her father's dwelling, brushing the early dew with her pretty feet from the fragrant herbage, or wandering at even along the silent banks of the gentle Scioto, when each zephyr
Offered his young pinion as her fan,
she acquired all the freshness and buoyancy of perfect health. Agile as the young roe upon the mountain, she moved with the ease, elegance and elasticity of a Sylph. Not too low to want a sufficient dignity of mien, she was not so tall as to exceed the proper stature of her sex. ”

“ If the wind is strong there may be a chopping sea, but in general it is a stilled expanse on which fog and mist eternally brood. The Kuro Siwo, or Black Stream, or Japan Current, of the Pacific, which corresponds to the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, touches the coast near this Sound, and the colder air from the land striking this warm river of the sea produces the heavy vapors which lie in impenetrable banks for miles, or float in filmy and downy clouds along the green mountain shores. ”

“ As Carl had said, Scipio had left a trail all the way—a broken branch, a bent reed, or a shred of cloth tied to the lily-leaves. All through the still day they glided on, the canoe moving without a sound on the bosom of the dark stream. They passed under the gray and solemn cypresses, rising without branches to an enormous height, their far foliage hidden by the moss, which hung down thickly in long flakes, diffusing the sunshine and making it silvery like mist ”

“ Scituate is different: different from Cohasset, with its superbly bold coast and its fashionable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.
Scituate life has always been along the shore. ”

“ The Nile here enters a rocky valley between Gebel Kookoo and the western mountains, and foams and frets around and against rock and island, until, suddenly contracting, it breaks into a roaring torrent, and dashes furiously onward in the shadow of perpendicular cliffs. Waterfall succeeds to waterfall, and it is difficult to identify the swollen, thunderous, angry river with the calm clear stream that brightens the fertile pastures of Shooa. ”

“ Flat-bottomed house-boats, with open sides, awnings [58] hung round with lanterns, and sturdy boatmen at either end of the craft, go up the river by hundreds and thousands at sunset, gliding out from the creeks and canals that everywhere intersect the city. The glittering fleet gathers in the broad stretch of stream lying between the Asakusa bashi and the Ryogoku bashi, and these two bridges are black with spectators. The rows of tea-houses lining both shores spread red blankets over the balcony railings, and hang row upon row of lanterns along balustrades and eaves. ”