Marietta.—Ship building.—Departure for Gallipoli.—Falling in with a Kentucky Boat.—Point-Pleasant.—The Great Kenhaway.
Marietta, the chief of the settlements on the New Continent, is situated upon the right bank of the Great Muskingum, at its embouchure in the Ohio. This town, which fifteen years ago was not in existence, is now composed of more than two hundred houses, some of which are built of brick, but the greatest part of wood. There are several from two to three stories high, which are somewhat elegantly built; nearly all of them are in front of the Ohio. The mountains which from Pittsburgh run by the side of this river, are at Marietta some distance from its banks, and leave a considerable extent of even ground, which will facilitate, in every respect, the enlarging of the town upon a {90} regular plan, and afford its inhabitants the most advantageous and agreeable situations; it will not be attended with the inconveniences that are met with at Pittsburgh, which is locked in on all sides by lofty mountains.
The inhabitants of Marietta were the first that had an idea of exporting directly to the Carribbee Islands the produce of the country, in a vessel built in their own town, which they sent to Jamaica. The success which crowned this first attempt excited such emulation among the inhabitants of that part of the Western Country, that several new vessels were launched at Pittsburgh and Louisville, and expedited to the isles, or to New York and Philadelphia. The ship yard at Marietta is situated near the town, on the Great Muskingum. When I was there they were building three brigs, one of which was of two hundred and twenty tons burthen.
The river Muskingum takes its source toward Lake Eria; it is not navigable for two hundred miles from its mouth in the Ohio, where it is about a hundred and sixty fathoms broad.[32] The country that it runs through, and especially its banks, are extremely fertile.
Near the town of Marietta are the remains of several {91} Indian fortifications. When they were discovered, they were full of trees of the same nature as those of the neighbouring forests, some of which were upwards of three feet diameter. These trees have been hewn down, and the ground is now almost entirely cultivated with Indian corn.
Major-General Hart, with whose son I was acquainted at Marietta, gave, in the Columbia Magazine for the year 1787, Vol. I. No. 9, a plan and a minute description of these ancient fortifications of the Indians: the translation of which is given in his Travels in Upper Pennsylvania. This officer, of the most distinguished merit, fell in the famous battle that General St. Clair[33] lost in 1791, near Lake Eria, against the united savages. When I was at Marietta, General St. Clair was Governor of the State of Ohio, a post which he occupied till this state was admitted in the union. His Excellency coming from Pittsburgh and going to Chillicotha, alighted at the inn where I lodged. As he was travelling in an old chaise, and without a servant, he did not at first attract my attention. In the United States, those who are called by the wish of their fellow-citizens to exercise these important functions do not change their dress, continue dwelling in their own houses, {92} and live like private individuals, without showing more ostentation, or incurring more expense. The emoluments attached to this office varies in every state; that of South Carolina, one of the richest of the union, gives its governor 4280 piastres, while the Governor of Kentucky receives no more than twelve or fifteen hundred. The inhabitants of the State of Ohio are divided in opinion concerning the political conduct of General St. Clair. With respect to talents, he has the reputation of being a better lawyer than a soldier.
On the eve of my departure I met a Frenchman at Marietta, who is settled on the banks of the Great Muskingum, about twenty miles from the town. I regretted much my inability to accept the invitation that he gave me to go and see him at his plantation, which would have given me time to make more extensive observations in that part of the Western Country.
On the 21st of July we set out from Marietta for Gallipoli, which is a distance of about a hundred miles. We reached there after having been four days on the water. The inhabitants of the country, by putting off from the shore in the night time, would have made that passage in two days and a half {93} or three days. According to the calculation that we made, the mean force of the stream was about a mile and a half an hour; it is hardly to be perceived in those parts where the water is very deep; but as you get nearer the isles, which, as I have said before, are very numerous, the bed of the river diminishes in depth, so that frequently there is not a foot of water out of the main channel. Whenever we came near those shallows the swiftness of the current was extreme, and the canoe was carried away like an arrow, which led us to observe that it was only as we distanced the islands that the bed increases in depth, and that the stream becomes less rapid.
On the day of our departure we joined, in the evening, a Kentucky boat, destined for Cincinnati. This boat, about forty feet long and fifteen broad, was loaded with bar iron and brass pots. There was also an emigrant family in it, consisting of the father, mother, and seven children, with all their furniture and implements of husbandry. The boatmen, three in number, granted us, without difficulty, permission to fasten our canoe to the end of their boat, and to pass the night with them. We intended, by that means, to accelerate our journey, by not putting up {94} at night, as we had before been accustomed to do, and hoped to spend a more comfortable night than the preceding one, during which we had been sadly tormented by the fleas, with which the greater part of the houses where we had slept, from the moment of our embarkation, had been infested. However our hopes were frustrated; for so far from being comfortable, we were still more incommoded. In the course of my travels it was only on the banks of the Ohio that I experienced this inconvenience.
We were on the point of leaving them about two in the morning, when the boat ran aground. Under these circumstances we could not desert our hosts, who had entertained us with their best, and who had made us partake of a wild turkey which they had shot the preceding evening on the banks of the river. We got into the water with the boatmen, and by the help of large sticks that we made use of as oars succeeded in pushing the vessel afloat, after two hours’ painful efforts.
In the course of the night we passed the mouth of the Little Kenhaway, which, after having watered that part of Virginia, empties itself into the Ohio, on its right bank. Its borders are not inhabited for more than fifteen or twenty miles from its embouchure. {95} The remainder of the country is so mountainous that they will not think of forming settlements there this long time. About five miles on this side the mouth of this little river, and on the right bank of the Ohio, is situated Bellepree, where there are not more than a dozen houses; but the settlements formed in the environs increase rapidly. This intelligence was given us at a house where we stopped after having left the Kentucky boat.
On the 23d of July, about ten in the morning, we discovered Point Pleasant, situated a little above the mouth of the Great Kenhaway, at the extremity of a point formed by the right bank of this river, which runs nearly in a direct line as far as the middle of the Ohio. What makes the situation more beautiful is, that for four or five miles on this side the Point, the Ohio, four hundred fathoms broad, continues the same breadth the whole of that extent, and presents on every side the most perfect line. Its borders, sloping, and elevated from twenty-five to forty feet, are, as in the whole of its windings, planted, at their base, with willows from fifteen to eighteen feet in height, the drooping branches and foliage of which form a pleasing contrast to the sugar maples, red maples, and ash trees, situated immediately {96} above. The latter, in return, are overlooked by palms, poplars, beeches, magnolias of the highest elevation, the enormous branches of which, attracted by a more splendid light and easier expansion, extend toward the borders, overshadowing the river, at the same time completely covering the trees situated under them. This natural display, which reigns upon the two banks, affords on each side a regular arch, the shadow of which, reflected by the crystal stream, embellishes, in an extraordinary degree, this magnificent coup d’œil.
The Ohio at Marietta presents a perspective somewhat similar, perhaps even more picturesque than the one I have just described, through the houses of this little town, that we perceived five or six miles off, the situation of which is fronting the middle of the river, going up.
The Great Kenhaway, more known in the country under that denomination than by that of the New River, which it bears in some charts, takes its source at the foot of the Yellow Mountain in Tennessea, but the mass of its waters proceed from one part of the Alleghany Mountains. The falls and currents that are so frequently met with in this river, for upward {97} of four hundred miles, will always be an obstacle to the exportation, by the Ohio and the Mississippi, of provisions from the part of Virginia which it waters. Its banks are inhabited, but less than those of the Ohio.