Ixxiv 



LIFE OF WILSON. 



" I now stripped, with alacrity, to my new avocation. The current went 

 about two and a half uailes an hour, and I added about three and a half miles 

 more to the boat's way with my oars. In the course of the day I passed a 

 number of arks, or, as they are usually called, Kentucky boats, loaded with 

 what it must be acknowledged are the most valuable commodities of a country; 

 viz., men, women and children, horses and ploughs, flour, millstones, &c. Several 

 of these floating caravans were loaded with store goods for the supply of tlie 

 settlements through which they passed, having a counter erected, shawls, mus- 

 lins, &c., displayed, and everything ready for transacting business. On 

 approaching a settlement they blow a horn or tin trumpet, which announces to 

 the inhabitants their arrival. I boarded many of these arks, and felt much 

 interested at the sight of so many human beings, migrating like birds of pass- 

 age to tl e luxuriant regions of the south and west. The arks are built in the 

 form of a parallelogram, being from twelve to fourteen feet wide, and from 

 forty to seventy feet long, covered above, rowed only occasionally by two oars 

 before, and steered by a long and powerful one fixed above, as in the annexed 

 sketch. 



Ark. 



Barge for passing up slrfam. 



" The barges are taken up along shore by setting poles, ;it the r:ite of twenty 

 miles or so a day ; the arks cost about one hundred iind fifty cents per foot, 

 according to their length ; and when they reach their places of destination, 

 seldom bring more than one-sixth their original cost. These arks descend 

 from all parts of the Ohio and its tributary streams, the Alleghany, Blonon- 

 gahela, Muskingum, Sciota, Miami, Kentucky, Wabash, &c., in the months of 

 March, April, and May particularly, with goods, produce, and emigrants, the 

 two former for markets along the river, or at New Orleans; the latter for 

 various parts of Kentucky, Ohio, and the Indiana Territory. I now return to 

 my own expedition. I rowed twenty odd miles the first spell, and found I 

 should be able to stand it perfectly well. About an hour after night I put up 

 at a miserable cabin, fifty-two miles from Pittsburgh, where I slept on what I 

 supposed to be corn-stalks, or something worse; so, preferring the smooth 

 bosom of the Ohio to this brush heap, I got up long before day, and, being 

 under no apprehension of losing my way, I again pushed out into the stream. 

 The landscape on each side lay in one mass of shade, but the grandeur of the 

 projecting headlands and vanishing points, or lines, was charmingly reflected 

 in the smooth glassy surface below. I could only discover when I was passing 

 a clearing, by the crowing of cocks; and now and then, in more solitary places, 



