Iviii 
MEMOIR OF 
you will have a pretty correct idea of the appearance of 
the Ohio. The hanks 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. 
“ 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 Pittsburg, 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 wa.s 
passing a clearing by the crowing of cocks, and notv and 
then, in more solitary places, the big horned owl made a 
most hideous hollowing, that echoed among the mountains. 
In this lonesome manner, with full leisure for observation 
and reflection, exposed to hardships all day, and hard 
berths all night, to storms of rain, hail, and snow — for it 
froze severely almost every night — I persevered, from the 
24th of February to Sunday evening, March 17, when I 
moored my skiff safely in Bear Grass Creek, at the rapids 
of the Ohio, after a voyage of seven hundred and twenty 
miles. My hands suffered the most ; and it will be some 
weeks yet before they recover their former feeling and 
flexibility. It would be the task of a month to detail all 
the particulars of my numerous excursions, in every 
direction, from the river. In Stubenville, Charlestowm 
and Wheeling, I found some friends. At Marietta, f 
