Read Ebook: Four Months in a Sneak-Box A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and Along the Gulf of Mexico by Bishop Nathaniel H Nathaniel Holmes

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 545 lines and 76120 words, and 11 pages

DRAWN BY F. T. MERRILL. ENGRAVED BY JOHN ANDREW & SON.

LIST OF MAPS

DRAWN AND ENGRAVED BY THE UNITED STATES COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY BUREAU TO ILLUSTRATE N. H. BISHOP'S BOAT VOYAGES.

GUIDE MAPS OF ROUTE FOLLOWED

MAP SHOWING RIVER AND PORTAGE ROUTES

Four Months in a Sneak-Box

THE BOAT FOR THE VOYAGE

THE READER who patiently followed the author in his long "VOYAGE OF THE PAPER CANOE," from the high latitude of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the warmer regions of the Gulf of Mexico, may desire to know the reasons which impelled the canoeist to exchange his light, graceful, and swift paper craft for the comical-looking but more commodious and comfortable Barnegat sneak-box, or duck-boat. Having navigated more than eight thousand miles in sail-boats, row-boats, and canoes, upon the fresh and salt watercourses of the North American continent , a hard-earned experience has taught me that while the light, frail canoe is indispensable for exploring shallow streams, for shooting rapids, and for making long portages from one watercourse to another, the deeper and more continuous water- ways may be more comfortably traversed in a stronger and heavier boat, which offers many of the advantages of a portable home.

To find such a boat--one that possessed many desirable points in a small hull--had been with me a study of years. I commenced to search for it in my boyhood--twenty-five years ago; and though I have carefully examined numerous small boats while travelling in seven foreign countries, and have studied the models of miniature craft in museums, and at exhibitions of marine architecture, I failed to discover the object of my desire, until, on the sea-shore of New Jersey, I saw for the first time what is known among gunners as the Barnegat sneak-box.

Having owned, and thoroughly tested in the waters of Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays, five of these boats, I became convinced that their claims for the good-will of the boating fraternity had not been over-estimated; so when I planned my second voyage from northern America to the Gulf of Mexico, and selected the great water-courses of the west and south as the route to be explored and studied, I chose the Barnegat sneak-box as the most comfortable model combined with other advantages for a voyager's use. The sneak-box offered ample stowage capacity, while canoes built to hold one person were not large enough to carry the amount of baggage necessary for the voyage; for I was to avoid hotels and towns, to live in my boat day and night, to carry an ample stock of provisions, and to travel in as comfortable a manner as possible. In fact, I adopted a very home-like boat, which, though only twelve feet long, four feet wide, and thirteen inches deep, was strong, stiff, dry, and safe; a craft that could be sailed or rowed, as wind, weather, or inclination might dictate,--the weight of which hardly exceeded two hundred pounds,--and could be conveniently transported from one stream to another in an ordinary wagon.

A Nautilus, or any improved type of canoe, would have been lighter and more easily transported, and could have been paddled at a higher speed with the same effort expended in rowing the heavier sneak-box; but the canoe did not offer the peculiar advantages of comfort and freedom of bodily motion possessed by its unique fellow-craft. Experienced canoeists agree that a canoe of fourteen feet in length, which weighs only seventy pounds, if built of wood, bark, canvas, or paper, when out of the water and resting upon the ground, or even when bedded on some soft material, like grass or rushes, cannot support the sleeping weight of the canoeist for many successive nights without becoming strained.

Light indeed must be the weight and slender and elastic the form of the man who can sleep many nights comfortably in a seventy-pound canoe without injuring it. Cedar canoes, after being subjected to such use for some time, generally become leaky; so, to avoid this disaster, the canoeist, when threatened with wet weather, is forced to the disagreeable task of troubling some private householder for a shelter, or run the risk of injuring his boat by packing himself away in its narrow, coffin-like quarters and dreaming that he is a sardine, while his restless weight is every moment straining his delicate canoe, and visions of future leaks arise to disturb his tranquillity.

The one great advantage possessed by a canoe is its lightness. Canoeists dwell upon the importance of the LIGHT WEIGHT of their canoes, and the ease with which they can be carried. If the canoeist is to sleep in his delicate craft while making a long journey, she must be made much heavier than the perfected models now in use in this country, many of which are under seventy-five pounds' weight. This additional weight is at once fatal to speed, and becomes burdensome when the canoeist is forced to carry his canoe upon his OWN shoulders over a portage. A sneak-box built to carry one person weighs about three times as much as a well-built cedar canoe.

This remarkable little boat has a history which does not reach very far back into the present century. With the assistance of Mr. William Errickson of Barnegat, and Dr. William P. Haywood of West Creek, Ocean County, New Jersey, I have been able to rescue from oblivion and bring to the light of day a correct history of the Barnegat sneak-box.

Captain Hazelton Seaman, of West Creek village, New Jersey, a boat- builder and an expert shooter of wild-fowl, about the year 1836, conceived the idea of constructing for his own use a low-decked boat, or gunning-punt, in which, when its deck was covered with sedge, he could secrete himself from the wild-fowl while gunning in Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays.

It was important that the boat should be sufficiently light to enable a single sportsman to pull her from the water on to the low points of the bay shores. During the winter months, when the great marshes were at times incrusted with snow, and the shallow creeks covered with ice,--obstacles which must be crossed to reach the open waters of the sound,--it would be necessary to use her as a sled, to effect which end a pair of light oaken strips were screwed to the bottom of the sneak-box, when she could be easily pushed by the gunner, and the transportation of the oars, sail, blankets, guns, ammunition, and provisions became a very simple matter. While secreted in his boat, on the watch for fowl, with his craft hidden by a covering of grass or sedge, the gunner could approach within shooting-distance of a flock of unsuspicious ducks; and this being done in a sneaking manner , which grows in dense forests in the swamps along the coast of New Jersey, as well as in other parts of North America. The wood is both white and brown, soft, fine-grained, and very light and durable. No wood used in boat-building can compare with the white cedar in resisting the changes from a wet to a dry state, and vice versa. The tree grows tall and straight. The lower part of the trunk with the diverging roots furnish knee timbers and carlines for the sneak-box. The ribs or timbers, and the carlines, are usually 1 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches in dimension, and are placed about ten inches apart. The frame above and below is covered with half-inch cedar sheathing, which is not less than six inches in width. The boat is strong enough to support a heavy man upon its deck, and when well built will rank next to the seamless paper boats of Mr. Waters of Troy, and the seamless wooden canoes of Messrs. Herald, Gordon & Stephenson, of the province of Ontario, Canada, in freedom from leakage.

During a cruise of twenty-six hundred miles not one drop of water leaked through the seams of the Centennial Republic. Her under planking was nicely joined, and the seams calked with cotton wicking, and afterwards filled with white-lead paint and putty. The deck planks, of seven inches width, were not joined, but were tongued and grooved, the tongues and grooves being well covered with a thick coat of white-lead paint.

The item of cost is another thing to be considered in regard to this boat. The usual cost of a first-class canoe of seventy pounds' weight, built after the model of the Rob Roy or Nautilus, with all its belongings, is about one hundred and twenty-five dollars; and these figures deter many a young man from enjoying the ennobling and healthful exercise of canoeing. A first-class sneak-box, with spars, sail, oars, anchor, &c., can be obtained for seventy-five dollars, and if several were ordered by a club they could probably be bought for sixty-five dollars each. The price of a sneak-box, as ordinarily built in Ocean County, New Jersey, is about forty dollars. The Centennial Republic cost about seventy-five dollars, and a city boat-builder would not duplicate her for less than one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The builders of the sneak-boxes have not yet acquired the art of overcharging their customers; they do not expect to receive more than one dollar and fifty cents or two dollars per day for their labor; and some of them are even so unwise as to risk their reputation by offering to furnish these boats for twenty-five dollars each. Such a craft, after a little hard usage, would leak as badly as most cedar canoes, and would be totally unfit for the trials of a long cruise.

The diagram given of the Centennial Republic will enable the reader of aquatic proclivities to understand the general principles upon which these boats are built. As they should be rated as third-class freight on railroads, it is more economical for the amateur to purchase a first-class boat at Barnegat, Manahawken, or West Creek, in Ocean County, New Jersey, along the Tuckerton Railroad, than to have a workman elsewhere, and one unacquainted with this peculiar model, experiment upon its construction at the purchaser's cost, and perhaps loss.

One bright morning, in the early part of the fall of 1875, I trudged on foot down one of the level roads which lead from the village of Manahawken through the swamps to the edge of the extensive salt marshes that fringe the shores of the bay. This road bore the euphonious name of Eel Street,--so named by the boys of the town. When about half-way from its end, I turned off to the right, and followed a wooded lane to the house of an honest surf-man, Captain George Bogart, who had recently left his old home on the beach, beside the restless waves of the Atlantic, and had resumed his avocation as a sneak-box builder.

The house and its small fields of low, arable land were environed on three sides by dense cedar and whortleberry swamps, but on the eastern boundary of the farm the broad salt marshes opened to the view, and beyond their limit were the salt waters of the bay, which were shut in from the ocean by a long, narrow, sandy island, known to the fishermen and wreckers as Long Beach,--the low, white sand-dunes of which were lifted above the horizon, and seemed suspended in the air as by a mirage. Across the wide, savanna-like plains came in gentle breezes the tonic breath of the sea, while hundreds, aye, thousands of mosquitoes settled quietly upon me, and quickly presented their bills.

In this sequestered nook, far from the bustle of the town, I found "Honest George," so much occupied in the construction of a sneak-box, under the shade of spreading willows, as to be wholly unconscious of the presence of the myriads of phlebotomists which covered every available inch of his person exposed to their attacks. The appropriate surroundings of a surf-man's house were here, scattered on every side in delightful confusion. There were piles of old rigging, iron bolts and rings, tarred parcelling, and cabin-doors,--in fact, all the spoils that a treacherous sea had thrown upon the beach; a sea so disastrous to many, but so friendly to the Barnegat wrecker,--who, by the way, is not so black a character as Mistress Rumor paints him. A tar-like odor everywhere prevailed, and I wondered, while breathing this wholesome air, why this surf-man of daring and renown had left his proper place upon the beach near the life-saving station, where his valuable experience, brave heart, and strong, brawny arms were needed to rescue from the ocean's grasp the poor victims of misfortune whose dead bodies are washed upon the hard strand of the Jersey shores every year from the wrecks of the many vessels which pound out their existence upon the dreaded coast of Barnegat? A question easily answered,--political preferment. His place had been filled by a man who had never pulled an oar in the surf, but had followed the occupation of a tradesman.

Thus Honest George, rejected by "the service," had left the beach, and crossing the wide bays to the main land, had taken up his abode under the willows by the marshes, but not too far from his natural element, for he could even now, while he hammered away on his sneak-boxes, hear the ceaseless moaning of the sea.

A verbal contract was soon made, and George agreed to build me for twenty-five dollars the best boat that had ever left his shop; he to do all the work upon the hull and spars, while the future owner was to supply all the materials at his own cost. The oars and sail were not included in the contract, but were made by other parties. In November, when I settled all the bills of construction, cost of materials, oar- locks, oars, spars, sail, anchor, &c., the sum-total did not exceed seventy-five dollars; and when the accounts of more than twenty boats and canoes built for me had been looked over, I concluded that the little craft, constructed by the surf-man, was, for the amount it cost and the advantages it gave me, the best investment I had ever made in things that float upon the water. Without a name painted upon her hull, and, like the "Maria Theresa" paper canoe, without a flag to decorate her, but with spars, sail, oars, rudder, anchor, cushions, blankets, cooking-kit, and double-barrelled gun, with ammunition securely locked under the hatch, the Centennial Republic, my future travelling companion, was ready by the middle of November for the descent of the western rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.

Captain George Bogart, attentive to the last to his pet craft, affectionately sewed her up in a covering of burlap, to protect her smooth surface from scratches during the transit over railroads. The two light oaken strips, which had been screwed to the bottom of the boat, kept the hull secure from injury by contact with nails, bolt- heads, &c., while she was being carried in the freight-cars of the Tuckerton, New Jersey, Southern and Pennsylvania railroads to Philadelphia, where she was delivered to the freight agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, to be sent to Pittsburgh, at the head of the Ohio River.

Here I must speak of a subject full of interest to all owners of boats, hoping that when our large corporations have their attention drawn to the fact they will make some provision for it. There appears to be no fixed freighting tariff established for boats, and the aquatic tourist is placed at the mercy of agents who too frequently, in their zeal for the interests of their employers, heavily tax the owner of the craft. The agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Philadelphia was sorely puzzled to know what to charge for a BOAT. He had loaded thousands of cars for Pittsburgh, but could find only one precedent to guide him. "We took a boat once to Pittsburgh," he said, "for twenty-five dollars, and yours should be charged the same." The shipping-clerk of a mercantile house, who had overheard the conversation, interrupted the agent with a loud laugh. "A charge of twenty-five dollars freight on a little thing like that! WHY, MAN, THAT SUM IS NEARLY HALF HER VALUE! How LARGE was the boat you shipped last fall to Pittsburgh for twenty-five dollars?" "Oh, about twice the size of this one," answered the agent; "but, size or no size, a boat's a boat, and we handle so few of them that we have no special tariff on them." "But," said the clerk, "you can easily and honestly establish a tariff if you will treat a boat as you do all other freight of the same class. Now, for instance, how do common boats rank, as first or third class freight?" "Third class, I should think," slowly responded the agent. "Ease your conscience, my friend," continued the clerk, "by weighing the boat, and charging the usual tariff rate for third class freight."

The boat, with its cargo still locked up inside, was put upon the scales, and the total weight was three hundred and ten pounds, for which a charge of seventy-two cents per one hundred pounds was made, and the boat placed on some barrels in a car. Thus did the common- sense and business-like arrangement of the friendly clerk secure for me the freight charge of two dollars and twenty-three cents, instead of twenty-five dollars, on a little boat for its carriage three hundred and fifty-three miles to Pittsburgh, and saved me not only from a pecuniary loss, but also from the uncomfortable feeling of being imposed upon.

In these days of canoe and boat voyages, when portages by rail are a necessary evil, a fixed tariff for such freight would save dollars and tempers, and some action in the matter is anxiously looked for by all interested parties.

I gave a parting look at my little craft snugly ensconced upon the top of a pile of barrels, and smiled as I turned away, thinking how precious she had already become to me, and philosophizing upon the strange genus, man, who could so readily twine his affections about an inanimate object. Upon consideration, it did not seem so strange a thing, however, for did not this boat represent the work of brains and hands for a generation past? Was it not the result of the study and hard-earned experiences of many men for many years? Men whose humble lives had been spent along the rough coast in daily struggles with the storms of ocean and of life? Many of them now slept in obscure graves, some in the deep sea, others under the tender, green turf; but here was the concentration of their ideas, the ultimatum of their labors, and I inwardly resolved, that, since to me was given the enjoyment, to them should be the honor, and that it should be through no fault of her captain if the Centennial Republic did not before many months reach her far-distant point of destination, twenty-six hundred miles away, on the white strands of the Gulf of Mexico.

SOURCES OF THE OHIO RIVER

DESCRIPTION OF THE MONONGAHELA AND ALLEGHANY RIVERS.-- THE OHIO RIVER.-- EXPLORATION OF CAVELIER DE LA SALLE.-- NAMES GIVEN BY ANCIENT CARTOGRAPHERS TO THE OHIO.-- ROUTES OF THE ABORIGINES FROM THE GREAT LAKES TO THE OHIO RIVER.

THE southerly branch of the Ohio River, and one of its chief affluents, is made by the union of the West Fork and Tygart Valley rivers, in the county of Marion, state of Virginia, the united waters of which flow north into Pennsylvania as the Monongahela River, and is there joined by the Cheat River, its principal tributary. The Monongahela unites with the Alleghany to form the Ohio, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The length of the Monongahela, without computing that of its tributaries, is about one hundred and fifty miles; but if we include its eastern fork, the Tygart Valley River, which flows from Randolph County, Virginia, the whole length of this tributary of the Ohio may exceed three hundred miles. It has a width at its union with the Alleghany of nearly one-fourth of a mile, and a depth of water sufficient for large steamboats to ascend sixty miles, to Brownsville, Pennsylvania, while light-draught vessels can reach its head, at Fairmont, Virginia.

The northern branch of the Ohio, known as the Alleghany River, has a length of four hundred miles, and its source is in the county of Potter, in northern Pennsylvania. It takes a very circuitous course through a portion of New York state, and re-enters Pennsylvania flowing through a hilly region, and at the flourishing city of Pittsburgh mingles its waters with its southern sister, the Monongahela.

The region traversed by the Alleghany is wild and mountainous, rich in pine forests, coal, and petroleum oil; and the extraction from its rocky beds of the last-named article is so enormous in quantity, that at the present time more than four million barrels of oil are awaiting shipment in the oil districts of Pennsylvania. The smaller steamboats can ascend the river to Olean, about two hundred and fifty miles above Pittsburgh. At Olean, the river has a breadth of twenty rods.

In consequence of its high latitude, the clear waters of the Alleghany usually freeze over by the 25th of December, after having transported upon its current the season's work, from the numerous saw-mills of the great wilderness through which it flows, in the form of rafts consisting of two hundred million feet of excellent lumber.

The Ohio River has a width of about half a mile below Pittsburgh, and this is its medial breadth along its winding course to its mouth at Cairo; but in places it narrows to less than twenty-five hundred feet, while it frequently widens to more than a mile. A geographical writer says, that, "In tracing the Ohio to its source, we must regard the Alleghany as its proper continuation. A boat may start with sufficient water within seven miles of Lake Erie, in sight sometimes of the sails which whiten the approach to the harbor of Buffalo, and float securely down the Conewango, or Cassadaga, to the Alleghany, down the Alleghany to the Ohio, and thence uninterruptedly to the Gulf of Mexico."

There are grave reasons for doubting that part of the statement which refers to a boat starting from a point within seven miles of Lake Erie. It is to be hoped that some member of the New York Canoe Club will explore the route mentioned, and give the results of his investigations to the public. He would need a canoe light enough to be easily carried upon the shoulders of one man, with the aid of the canoeist's indispensable assistant--the canoe-yoke.

It will be seen that the Ohio with its affluents drains an immense extent of country composed of portions of seven large states of the Union, rich in agricultural wealth, in timber, iron, coal, petroleum, salt, clays, and building-stone. The rainfall of the Ohio Valley is so great as to give the river a mean discharge at its mouth of one hundred and fifty-eight thousand cubic feet per second. This is the drainage of an area embracing two hundred and fourteen thousand square miles.

The head of the Ohio River, at Pittsburgh, has an elevation of eleven hundred and fifty feet above the sea, while in the long descent to its mouth there is a gradual fall of only four hundred feet; hence its current, excepting during the seasons of freshets, is more gentle and uniform than that of any other North American river of equal length. During half the year the depth of water is sufficient to float steamboats of the largest class along its entire length. Between the lowest stage of water, in the month of September, and the highest, in March, there is sometimes a range of fifty feet in depth. The spring freshets in the tributaries will cause the waters of the great river to rise twelve feet in twelve hours. During the season of low water the current of the Ohio is so slow, as flatboat-men have informed me, that their boats are carried by the flow of the stream only ten miles in a day. The most shallow portion of the river is between Troy and Evansville. Troy is twelve miles below the historic Blennerhasset's Island, which lies between the states of Ohio and Virginia. Here the water sometimes shoals to a depth of only two feet.

Robert Cavelier de la Salle is credited with having made the discovery of the Ohio River. From the St. Lawrence country he went to Onondaga, and reaching a tributary of the Ohio River, he descended the great stream to the "Fa1ls," at Louisville, Kentucky. His men having deserted him, he returned alone to Lake Erie. This exploration of the Ohio was made in the winter of 1669-70, or in the following spring.

The director of the Dpt des Cartes of the Marine and Colonies, at Paris, in 1872 possessed a rich mass of historical documents, the collection of which had covered thirty years of his life. This material related chiefly to the French rule in North America, and its owner had offered to dispose of it to the French government on condition that the entire collection should be published. The French government was, however, only willing to publish parts of the whole, and the director retained possession of his property. Through the efforts of Mr. Francis Parkman, the truthful American historian, supported by friends, an appropriation was made by Congress, in 1873, for the purchase and publication of this valuable collection of the French director; and it is now the property of the United States government. All that relates to the Sieur de la Salle--his journals and letters--has been published in the original French, in three large volumes of six hundred pages each. La Salle discovered the Ohio, yet the possession of the rich historical matter referred to throws but little light upon the details of this important event. The discoverer- -of the great west, in an address to Frontenac, the governor of Canada, made in 1677, asserted that he had discovered the Ohio, and had descended it to a fall which obstructed it. This locality is now known as the "Falls of the Ohio," at Louisville, Kentucky.

The second manuscript map of Galine'e, made about the year 1672, has upon it this inscription: "River Ohio, so called by the Iroquois on account of its beauty, which the Sieur de la Salle descended." It was probably the interpretation of the Iroquois word Ohio which caused the French frequently to designate this noble stream as "La belle rivire."

A little later the missionary Marquette designed a map, upon which he calls the Ohio the "Ouabouskiaou." Louis Joliet's first map gives the Ohio without a name, but supplies its place with an inscription stating that La Salle had descended it. In Joliet's second map he calls the Ohio "Ouboustikou."

After the missionaries and other explorers had given to the world the knowledge possessed at that early day of the great west, a young and talented engineer of the French government, living in Quebec, and named Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin, completed, in 1684, the most elaborate map of the times, a carefully traced copy of which, through the courtesy of Mr. Francis Parkman, I have been allowed to examine. The original map of Franquelin has recently disappeared, and is supposed to have been destroyed. This map is described in the appendix to Mr. Parkman's "Discovery of the Great West," as being "six feet long and four and a half wide." On it, the Ohio is called "Fleuve St. Louis, ou Chucagoa, ou Casquinampogamou;" but the appellation of "River St. Louis" was dropped very soon after the appearance of Franquelin's map, and to the present time it justly retains the Iroquois name given it by its brave discoverer La Salle.

It would be interesting to know by which of the routes used by the Indians in those early days La Salle travelled to the Ohio. After the existence of the Ohio was made known, the first route made use of in reaching that river by the coureurs de bois and other French travellers from Canada, was that from the southern shore of Lake Erie, from a point near where the town of Westfield now stands, across the wilderness by portage southward about nine miles to Chautaugue Lake. These parties used light bark canoes, which were easily carried upon the shoulders of men whenever a "carry" between the two streams became necessary. The canoes were paddled on the lake to its southern end, out of which flowed a shallow brook, which afforded water enough in places to float the frail craft. The shoal water, and the obstructions made by fallen trees, necessitated frequent portages. This wild and tortuous stream led the voyagers to the Alleghany River, where an ample depth of water and a propitious current carried them into the Ohio.

The French, finding this a laborious and tedious route, abandoned it for a better one. Where the town of Erie now stands, on the southern shore of the lake of the same name, a small stream flows from the southward into that inland sea. Opposite its mouth is Presque Isle, which protects the locality from the north winds, and, acting as a barrier to the turbulent waves, offers to the mariner a safe port of refuge behind its shores. The French ascended the little stream, and from its banks made a short portage to the Rivire des boeuf, or some tributary of French Creek, and descended it to the Alleghany and the Ohio. This Erie and French River route finally became the military highway of the Canadians to the Ohio Valley, and may be called the second route from Lake Erie.

The third route to the Ohio from Lake Erie commenced at the extreme southwestern end of that inland sea. The voyagers entered Maumee Bay and ascended the Maumee River, hauling their birch canoes around the rapids between Maumee City and Perrysburgh, and between Providence and Grand Rapids. Surmounting these obstacles, they reached the site of Fort Wayne, where the St. Joseph and St. Mary rivers unite, and make, according to the author of the "History of the Maumee Valley," the "Maumee," or "Mother of Waters," as interpreted from the Indian tongue. At this point, when ninety-eight miles from Lake Erie, the travellers were forced to make a portage of a mile and a half to a branch called Little River, which they descended to the Wabash, which stream, in the early days of French exploration, was thought to be the main river of the Ohio system. The Wabash is now the boundary line for a distance of two hundred miles between the states of Indiana and Illinois. Following the Wabash, the voyager would enter the Ohio River about one hundred and forty miles above its junction with the Mississippi.

The great Indian diplomatist, "Little Turtle," in making a treaty speech in 1795, when confronting Anthony Wayne, insisted that the Fort Wayne portage was the "key or gateway" of the tribes having communication with the inland chain of lakes and the gulf coast. It is now claimed by many persons that this was the principal and favorite route of communication between the high and low latitudes followed by the savages hundreds of years before Europeans commenced the exploration of the great west.

There was a fourth route from the north to the tributaries of the Ohio, which was used by the Seneca Indians frequently, though rarely by the whites. It was further east than the three already described. The Genesee River flows into Lake Ontario about midway between its eastern shores and the longitude of the eastern end of Lake Erie. In using this fourth route, the savages followed the Genesee, and made a portage to some one of the affluents of the Alleghany to reach the Ohio River.

FROM PITTSBURGH TO BLENNERHASSET'S ISLAND

THE START FOR THE GULF.-- CAUGHT IN THE ICE-RAFT.-- CAMPING ON THE OHIO.-- THE GRAVE CREEK MOUND.-- AN INDIAN SEPULCHRE.-- BLENNERHASSET'S ISLAND.-- AARON BURR'S CONSPIRACY.-- A RUINED FAMILY.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet