•« 



Rocky Mountains. oi) 



miles below the town, is a harbour, in which boats may lie 

 in perfect security.* 



We would not encourage the idea, that the site now fixed 

 upon as a town is exclusively the point where business is to 

 be done ; but that the town will eventually extend along 

 on that side of the river about four miles, to the Big Chain 

 above described. 



In view of the great extent of inland navigation centering 

 at this place, and the incalculable amount of products, to be 

 realized at no distiant period, from the cultivation of the 

 rich vallies and fertile plains of the west ; a great proportion 

 of which must find a market here ; no doubt can be enter- 

 tained that it will eventually become a place of as great wealth 

 and importance, as almost any in the United States. 



In the afternoon of the 30th we arrived at the mouth of 

 the Ohio. 



This beautiful river has a course of one thousand and thir- 

 ty-three miles, through a country surpassed in fertility of 

 soil by none in the United States. Except in high floods, 

 its water is transparent, its current gentle and nearly uni- 

 form. For more than half of its course its banks are high, 

 and its bed gravelly. With the exception of about two miles 

 at the rapids, at Louisville, it has sufficient depth of water, 

 for a part of the year, to float vessels of 300 tons burthen to 

 Cincinnati. The country which it washes, may, with proprie- 

 ty, be considered under two divisions. The first, extending 

 from its head at Pittsburgh, to the little town of Rockport, 

 about 150 miles below the falls or rapids at Louisville, is 

 hilly. This district forms a portion of one of the sides of 

 that great formation of secondary rocks, which occupies the 



* Although the range from extreme high to extreme low water, amouuls 

 to sixty feet perpendicular, in many parts of the Ohio, it does not exceed 

 twenty feet at this place, owing to the width to which the Ohio spreads 

 in this neighbourhood, when the river is high. This may be considered a 

 circumstance much in favour of the place, when compared with the 

 disadvant?ges most other positions on the Ohio labour under, from inun- 

 dation in high water, and the difficulty of unlading in low. 



