458 



AUDUBON 



by the attacks of the Indians who watched their motions. 

 Many travellers have described these boats, formerly called 

 arks, but now named flatboats. But have they told you, 

 kind reader, that in those times a boat thirty or forty feet 

 in length, by ten or twelve in breadth, was considered a 

 stupendous fabric ; that this boat contained men, women 

 and children, huddled together, with horses, cattle, hogs 

 and poultry for their companions, while the remaining 

 portion was crammed with vegetables and packages of 

 seeds? The roof or deck of the boat was not unlike a 

 farm-yard, being covered with hay, ploughs, carts, wagons, 

 and various agricultural implements, together with nu- 

 merous others, among which the spinning-wheels of the 

 matrons were conspicuous. Even the sides of the floating- 

 mass were loaded with the wheels of the different vehicles, 

 which themselves lay on the roof. Have they told you 

 that these boats contained the little all of each family of 

 venturous emigrants, who, fearful of being discovered by 

 the Indians under night moved in darkness, groping their 

 way from one part to another of these floating habitations, 

 denying themselves the comfort of fire or light, lest the 

 foe that watched them from the shore should rush upon 

 them and destroy them? Have they told you that this 

 boat was used, after the tedious voyage was ended, as the 

 first dwelling of these new settlers? No, kind reader, such 

 things have not been related to you before. The travellers 

 who have visited our country have had other objects in 

 view. 



I shall not describe the many massacres which took 

 place among the different parties of white and red men, 

 as the former moved down the Ohio ; because I have 

 never been very fond of battles, and indeed have always 

 wished that the world were more peaceably inclined than 

 it is; and shall merely add that, in one way or other, 

 Kentucky was wrested from the original owners of the 

 soil. Let us, therefore, turn our attention to the sports 



