Afloat on the Ohio

Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo

There were four of us pilgrimsmy Wife, our Boy of ten and a half years, the Doctor, and I. My object in goingthe others went for the outingwas to gather "local color" for work in Western history. The Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West. I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various phases,to see with my own eyes what the borderers saw; in imagination, to redress the pioneer stage, and repeople it. A motley company have here performed their parts: Savages of the mound-building age, rearing upon these banks curious earthworks for archologists of the nineteenth century to puzzle over; Iroquois war-parties, silently swooping upon sleeping villages of the Shawanese, and in noisy glee returning to the New York lakes, laden with spoils and captives; La Salle, prince of French explorers and coureurs de bois, standing at the Falls of [pg xii] the Ohio, and seeking to fathom the geographical mysteries of the continent; French and English fur-traders, in bitter contention for the patronage of the red man; borderers of the rival nations, shedding each other's blood in protracted partisan wars; surveyors like Washington and Boone and the McAfees, clad in fringed hunting-shirts and leathern leggings, mapping out future states; hardy frontiersmen, fighting, hunting, or farming, as occasion demanded; George Rogers Clark, descending the river with his handful of heroic Virginians to win for the United States the great Northwest, and for himself the laurels of fame; the Marietta pilgrims, beating Revolutionary swords into Ohio plowshares; and all that succeeding tide of immigrants from our own Atlantic coast and every corner of Europe, pouring down the great valley to plant powerful commonwealths beyond the mountains. A richly-varied panorama of life passes before us as we contemplate the glowing story of the Ohio. In making our historical pilgrimage we might more easily have "steamboated" the river,to use a verb in local vogue; but, from the deck of a steamer, scenes take on a different [pg xiii] aspect than when viewed from near the level of the flood; for a passenger by such a craft, the vistas of a winding stream change so rapidly that he does not realize how it seemed to the canoeist or flatboatman of old; and there are too many modern distractions about such a mode of progress. To our minds, the manner of our going should as nearly as possible be that of the pioneer himselfhence our skiff, and our nightly camp in primitive fashion. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 29306
Author: Thwaites, Reuben Gold
Release Date: Jul 4, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English