Ixxiv 
LIFE OF AYILSON. 
" 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, womeu 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, mus- 
lins, &c., displayed, and everything ready for transacting business. On 
approaching a settlement they blow a horn ur tin trumpet, which announces to 
the inhabitants their arrival. I bourded many of these arks, and felt much 
interested at the sight of so many human beings, migrating like birds of pass- 
age to the 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. 
" The barges are taken up along shore by setting poles, at the rate of twenty 
miles or so a day ; the arks cost about one hundred and 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, Monon- 
gahela. Muskingum, Sciota, Miami, Kentucky, Wabash, &c., in the months of 
March, April, and 3Iay particularly, with goods, j;)roduce, 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 hrimh hcaj), 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, 
