LIFE OF WILSON. 
evil 
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- 
