Departure from Wheeling for Marietta.—Aspect of the Banks of the Ohio.—Nature of the Forests.—Extraordinary size of several kinds of Trees.
On the 18th of July in the morning we purchased a canoe, twenty-four feet long, eighteen inches wide, and about as many in depth. These canoes are always made with a single trunk of a tree; the pine and tulip tree are preferred for that purpose, the wood being very soft. These canoes are too narrow to use well with oars, and in shallow water are generally forced along either with a paddle or a staff. Being obliged at times to shorten our journey by leaving the banks of the river, where one is under shade, to get into the current, or to pass from one point to another, and be exposed to the heat of a scorching sun, we covered our canoe a quarter of its length with a piece of cloth thrown {83} upon two hoops. In less than three quarters of an hour we made up our minds to continue our journey by water; notwithstanding we were obliged to defer our departure till the afternoon, to wait for provisions which we might have wanted by the way; as the inhabitants who live in different parts upon the banks of the river are very badly supplied.
We left Wheeling about five in the afternoon, made twelve miles that evening, and went to sleep on the right bank of the Ohio, which forms the boundary of the government, described by the name of the North West territory of the Ohio, and which is now admitted in the union under the denomination of the State of Ohio. Although we had made no more than twelve miles we were exceedingly fatigued, not so much by continually paddling as by remaining constantly seated with our legs extended. Our canoe being very narrow at bottom, obliged us to keep that position; the least motion would have exposed us to being overset. However, in the course of a few days custom made these inconveniences disappear, and we attained the art of travelling comfortably.
We took three days and a half in going to Marietta, about a hundred miles from Wheeling. Our {84} second day was thirty miles, the third forty, and on the fourth in the morning we reached this little town, situated at the mouth of the great Muskingum. The first day, wholly taken up with this mode of travelling, so novel to us, and which did not appear to me to be very safe, I did not bend my attention further; but on the following day, better used to this kind of navigation, I observed more tranquilly from our canoe, the aspect that the borders of this magnificent river presented.
Leaving Pittsburgh, the Ohio flows between two ridges, or lofty mountains, nearly of the same height, which we judged to be about two hundred fathoms. Frequently they appeared undulated at their summit, at other times it seemed as though they had been completely level. These hills continue uninterruptedly for the space of a mile or more, then a slight interval is observed, that sometimes affords a passage to the rivers that empty themselves into the Ohio; but most commonly another hill of the same height begins at a very short distance from the place where the preceding one left off. These mountains rise successively for the space of three hundred miles, and from our canoe we were enabled to observe them more distinctly, as they were more or less distant {85} from the borders of the river. Their direction is parallel to the chain of the Alleghanies; and although they are at times from forty to a hundred miles distant from them, and that for an extent of two hundred miles, one cannot help looking upon them as belonging to these mountains. All that part of Virginia situated upon the left bank of the Ohio is excessively mountainous, covered with forests, and almost uninhabited; where I have been told by those who live on the banks of the Ohio, they go every winter to hunt bears.
They give the name of river-bottoms and flat-bottoms to the flat and woody ground between the foot of these mountains and the banks of the river, the space of which is sometimes five or six miles broad. The major part of the rivers which empty themselves into the Ohio have also these river-bottoms, which, as well as those in question, are of an easy culture, but nothing equal to the fertility of the banks of the Ohio. The soil is a true vegetable humus, produced by the thick bed of leaves with which the earth is loaded every year, and which is speedily converted into mould by the humidity that reigns in these forests. But what adds still more to the thickness of these successive beds of vegetable {86} earth are the trunks of enormous trees, thrown down by time, with which the surface of the soil is bestrewed in every part, and which rapidly decays. In more than a thousand leagues of the country, over which I have travelled at different epochs, in North America, I do not remember having seen one to compare with the latter for the vegetative strength of the forests. The best sort of land in Kentucky and Tenessea, situated beyond the mountains of Cumberland, is much the same; but the trees do not grow to such a size as on the borders of the Ohio. Thirty-six miles before our arrival at Marietta we stopped at the hut of one of the inhabitants of the right bank, who shewed us, about fifty yards from his door, a palm-tree, or platanus occidentalis, the trunk of which was swelled to an amazing size; we measured it four feet beyond the surface of the soil, and found it forty-seven feet in circumference. It appeared to keep the same dimensions for the height of fifteen or twenty feet, it then divided into several branches of a proportionate size. By its external appearance no one could tell that the tree was hollow; however I assured myself it was by striking it in several places with a billet. Our host told us that if we would spend the day with him he would {87} shew us others as large, in several parts of the wood, within two or three miles of the river. This circumstance supports the observations which my father made, when travelling in that part of the country, that the poplar and palm are, of all the trees in North America, those that attain the greatest diameter.
“About fifteen miles,” said he, “up the river Muskingum, in a small island of the Ohio, we found a palm-tree, or platanus occidentalis, the circumference of which, five feet from the surface of the earth, where the trunk was most uniform, was forty feet four inches, which makes about thirteen feet in diameter. Twenty years prior to my travels, General Washington had measured this same tree, and had found it nearly of the same dimensions. I have also measured palms in Kentucky, but I never met with any above fifteen or sixteen feet in circumference. These trees generally grow in marshy places.
“The largest tree in North America, after the palm, is the poplar, or liriodendron tulipifera. Its circumference is sometimes fifteen, sixteen, and even eighteen feet: Kentucky is their native country; between Beard Town and Louisville we {88} saw several parts of the wood which were exclusively composed of them. The soil is clayey, cold and marshy; but never inundated.
“The trees that are usually found in the forests that border the Ohio are the palm, or platanus occidentalis; the poplar, the beach-tree, the magnolia acuminata, the celtis occidentalis, the acacia, the sugar-maple, the red maple, the populus nigra, and several species of nut-trees; the most common shrubs are, the annona triloba, the evonimus latifolius, and the laurus bensoin.”