THE CATTLE ARE SENT AWAY
With blankets and sheets we made a covering for the after part of our ark, so that the women and children would be kept dry in case of a storm.
When all this had been done, and we had bought as much in the way of provisions as could be purchased at a reasonable price, Isaac, Michael, and Ben set off with the beasts.
It gave me a homesick feeling to see them march away; we had been together so long and had gone through so many hardships.
Within half an hour after the horses and oxen, with their drivers, had disappeared, we pushed off from the shore, and very strange did it seem to be carried along by the current, instead of fighting one's way through mud.
I said to myself that now it was the same as coming to the end of our journey, for we had simply to sit still and let the river do the work.
This, however, I soon understood was a mistake, for although we were not forced to trudge through mud and snow, there was ample work for men and boys in holding the clumsy craft out from the shore where she was like to go aground, or again, in leaping overboard and actually lifting her off some shoal on which she had grounded, as it seemed to me, in a very spirit of perverseness.
It is true that we were forced to work quite as hard in navigating the boat as when we plodded over the miry road, and yet there was this advantage, we were able to eat our meals at regular times.
What with rowing and poling, and now and then leaping waist deep into the water to shove her from the shoals, we contrived, after a considerable time, to get as far as the Monongahela River, where the water was deeper and the current swifter, permitting us to get some rest now and then, and for the first time since leaving Mattapoisett did this journey begin to seem pleasing.
It was Sunday evening when we arrived at Pittsburgh, making our clumsy craft fast to a stake on the shore at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, with the Ohio in full view.