LIFE OF WILSON. cvii 



from being concerned at my new situation, I felt my heart ex- 

 pand with joy at the novelties which surrounded me; I listened 

 with pleasure to the whistling of the Red-bird on the banks as 

 I passed, and contemplated the forest scenery as it receded, 

 with increasing delight. The smoke of the numerous sugar 

 camps, rising lazily among the mountains, gave great effect to 

 the varying landscape; and the grotesque log cabins, that here 

 and there opened from the woods, were diminished into mere 

 dog-houses by the sublimity of the impending mountains. If 

 you suppose to yourself two parallel ranges of forest-covered 

 hills, whose irregular summits are seldom more than three or 

 four miles apart, winding through an immense extent of coun- 

 try, and enclosing a river half a mile wide, which alternately 

 washes the steep declivity on one side, and laves a rich flat 

 forest-clad bottom on the other, of a mile or so in breadth, you 

 will have a pretty correct idea of the appearance of the Ohio. 

 The banks of these rich flats are from twenty to sixty and 

 eighty feet high, and even these last were within a few feet of 

 being overflowed in December, 1808. 



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

 current went about two and a half miles 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 the settlements 

 through which they passed, having a counter erected, shawls, 

 muslins, &c. displayed, and every thing 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 passage 

 to the luxuriant regions of the south and west. The arks are 

 built in the form of a parallelogram, being from twelve to four- 



