If we look at a map, we shall see that the Allegheny river flows southward from New York into western Pennsylvania. The Monongahela river, rising among the rough highlands of West Virginia, sends its waters toward the north, and the two great streams join to form the Ohio, which flows on far to the southwest. All together they are like wide-spreading branches of an apple tree uniting with the gnarled old trunk.
In the great crotch of the tree Pittsburg is snugly placed. A narrow point of flat land lies between the rivers just before they come together to make the Ohio, and back of this point, to the east, rise steep hills. Across the Allegheny and across the Monongahela the banks rise sharply for several hundred feet, and there too, wherever the slope is not too steep for houses to stand, tens of thousands of busy people have their homes.
The rivers are crossed by many bridges and are full of boats. Up and down for miles their banks are smoky and noisy with furnaces, and at night the iron mills light up the valley with wonderful torches of flame leaping into the black sky. If the great towns clustered within an hour’s ride were counted in, Pittsburg would now have a million people. Only a hundred years ago she was, like many other cities in the New World, a humble village between two rivers. As early as 1730 white men journeyed here to trade with the Indians, who could come from any part of the western country in their canoes. Washington stood here November 24, 1753, and in his description of the place wrote, “I think it extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute command of both rivers.” Men were to need forts for a long time in that country, and the one which was soon built on this site had a stirring history. In 1758 it was recaptured from the French and named for England’s prime minister, Pitt. Hence we have Pittsburgh, which is the old spelling, but it is now common to drop the h, and write it Pittsburg.
The old blockhouse of brick, which is still standing, was built in 1764. Washington came back to the spot in 1770, and found here about twenty houses, used by men who were trading with the Indians. Arthur Lee, in 1784, thought that the place would “never be very considerable,” but he was not a good prophet. In 1816 it had become a city and has been steadily gaining in importance since that time. Not much more than fifty years later an historian of Pittsburg said that if Mr. Lee could then come back, he would find a city bigger than the six largest cities and towns in the Old Dominion.
The secret of Pittsburg’s success is in its location. Many years ago it was called “the gate of the West,” and through it has gone much of the trade between the East and the lands beyond the mountains. Even from New York the pioneers came by land and water to the head of the Ohio, an undertaking by no means easy in those days. A prominent man in Pittsburg once contracted with the government to send provisions to Oswego, and as he wished to make the long journey as profitable as he could, he packed the provisions in strong barrels that would hold salt. When these were emptied they were filled for the return trip with Onondaga salt and carried by lake Ontario to the Niagara river below the falls. They were then taken around the falls and across the lake to Erie, up French creek, over the portage, and at length by boat to Pittsburg. It was a roundabout way, but the enterprising dealer sold salt in Pittsburg for half the price charged by the packers who brought it by rough mountain roads from the East.
Improvements in methods of transportation caused an increase in business activity. By the Pittsburg pike, by the canal with its Portage Railway, and finally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, trade was coming from Philadelphia. Not less promptly did the men of Baltimore and the Virginians reach Pittsburg by the trail, the National Road, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Because Pittsburg stood at the head of the Ohio it was a door to the whole Mississippi valley, and men and goods quickly found their way to it. Once there a boat would take them over thousands of miles of river, or to New Orleans and the open sea.
Henry Clay used to tell in Congress a good story about Pittsburg. He said that a ship built at Pittsburg sailed down the river, through the gulf, across the Atlantic, into the Mediterranean, and anchored at Leghorn. The captain handed his papers to the officer of the customhouse, who did not credit them. “Sir,” said he, “your papers are forged; there is no such port as Pittsburg in the world; your vessel must be confiscated.” Though the captain was frightened, he pulled out a map and taught the Italian official a lesson in geography, making him understand at last that one could sail a thousand miles up the Mississippi and another thousand up the Ohio, and that there was such a port as Pittsburg.
The first boats on the Ohio river were the light bark canoes of the red men. These could sail in almost any water, but they were easily broken and could carry only light loads. When white men began to throng the river and wanted to carry their families, household furniture, tools, grain, and all the produce of the land, they needed something larger and stronger. At first they built barges, which were little more than great boxes made water-tight. These they loaded and steered down the stream as best they could. They did not expect to bring them back, for such boats could not be pushed against the current. Hence the barge builders at Pittsburg always had work, for a new one had to be provided for each fresh cargo.
Later men began to make keel boats, in which they could not only go downstream but could also, by poling, make a return voyage. These boats were about fifty feet long and could carry twenty tons or more. Along the sides were “running boards,” where the men went up and down with their setting poles to drive the boat against the current. The space between the running boards was covered over to form a kind of cabin. It was not an easy task to pole one of these boats up a rapid, and the life on the river was a life of toil.
During the last twenty years before 1800, or while Washington was President, a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia took up traffic on the Ohio. He sent dry goods and other merchandise overland to Pittsburg, thence down the Ohio in a barge, and up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia in Illinois, which was at that time an important town. Here the cargo was exchanged for skins of bear, deer, buffalo, and other animals, to be taken up the Ohio and sent from Pittsburg to Philadelphia.
It took time to trade in this way. A summer was needed to go down to New Orleans and back again with a keel boat or a barge. When a boat came up “with furs from St. Louis; cotton from Natchez; hemp, tobacco, and saltpeter from Maysville; or sugar and cotton from New Orleans and Natchez, it was a wonder to the many, and drew vast crowds to see and rejoice over it.”
One of the river men. Captain Shreve, once took his boat from New Orleans up to Louisville in twenty-five days. The people celebrated this remarkable achievement and gave the captain a public dinner. No doubt they made as much ado as we should now make if a ship should go from New York to Liverpool in three days. They were quite right to make a feast in honor of the occasion, for the time commonly allowed for the journey had been three months.
The flatboat, which for years was used in river traffic, was about forty feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet deep. It had a flat bottom and was handled by means of three oars on each side. Two of these were called sweeps, and were almost as long as the boat itself. At the stern was a still longer steering oar. When the water rose in the autumn these boats carried loads of produce and bore thousands of families who were seeking homes farther west.
Old and young with their household treasures, which often included the cow, sailed down in these rude house boats to some chosen spot in the distant wilderness. It was in a boat like these that the tall and awkward young man, Abraham Lincoln, made a voyage to New Orleans and first saw something of the outside world.
Redstone was an old name for Brownsville, where the National Road crossed the Monongahela, and many boats started from here in early days. It is said that an old boatman was once hailed by a seeker after information. “Where are you from?” was the first question. “Redstone,” was the answer. “What is your lading?” “Millstones.” “What is your captain’s name?” “Whetstone.” “Where are you bound?” “For Limestone.” The interesting part of the story is that these answers were all true.
Large as the traffic was by the flatboats, it was greatly increased when steamboats began to run on the rivers. No other craft could hope to compete with these.
The boatmen owed a grudge to the steamboat, just as the pack-horse men had hated the Conestoga wagon, for they saw that their trade was lost, and it was hard to try to make a living in some other way. For many years the great passenger boats reigned supreme on the rivers of the West, but at last they in turn were forced to give way to the railroads. Such boats still run on the Ohio and the Mississippi, but men do not travel on them when they wish to go quickly.
Railroad cars, however, do not take the place of some boats on the Ohio. Look out on the Monongahela at Pittsburg and you may see large fields of boats,—many acres of barges, for there are barges on the river still, though they do not look like the old ones. They are of great size and are sometimes made of steel. The coal, taken from the hill out of which it is dug, is run on a trestle along the river and dumped into one of these boats. At Pittsburg the barges wait for the water to rise to a “coal-boat” stage,—that is, until there is a depth of at least eight feet all the way down the river Then a number of barges are lashed together and a steamboat pushes them down the stream. The water often comes up suddenly, and the coal must be rushed to market while the high water lasts. A single towboat sometimes takes to New Orleans several acres of coal from the great Pittsburg coal seam. This lies flat under the hilltops and is mined from the edges where the rivers have cut down through the coal, far into the beds of rock that lie below.
On the Monongahela the United States owns fifteen dams with locks, and the river is thus “slacked” far up into West Virginia. The dams change the river into a series of long, still ponds, which are deep enough to float the coal barges. Below Pittsburg, in the Ohio, is another dam which sets the water back and makes a harbor for the city.
There is no coal to send down the Allegheny, but there are logs to be rafted, and there is much oil, for the river flows through the petroleum region around Oil City. Some of this is taken to refineries at Pittsburg and made ready for use. Much natural gas is obtained by boring and is used in the city for warming houses and for cooking.
A cloud of smoke from the soft coal burned in so many shops and furnaces hangs over the lower parts of Pittsburg and has given it the name of “The Smoky City.” James Parton says that on the first morning of his visit there he felt sure that he was rising very early, for the street lamps were all burning and he ate his breakfast in a room lighted by gas. As the room was filled with people, he thought Pittsburg was very enterprising, and himself along with it, but he was quite taken aback when he looked at his watch and found that it was almost nine o’clock. Darker even than the streets are the “rooms” in which thousands of miners, within a few miles of the city, dig out coal with their picks and shovels.
If one rides into Pittsburg by night, he will see something finer than fireworks. The train is likely to whirl him past long rows of fiery ovens in which coal is being made into coke. And in many towns near by, as well as along the rivers by the city itself, the jets of flame will show iron furnaces and steel mills, with grimy workmen moving about in the strange light.
The iron ore for these furnaces is brought from many parts of the country, but chiefly from the lands around lake Superior. It is shipped down the lakes in large steamers and loaded into cars at Cleveland or some other port on lake Erie. Instead of carrying the coal to the ore, the ore is thus brought to the coal, without which it could not be worked. The reason for this is that Pittsburg is much nearer the places where most of the iron is to be used. If the coal of Pennsylvania were taken to the iron mines of Minnesota and the furnaces built there, much of the iron and steel would have to be carried back a long way to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other parts of the East.
Glass mills form an important part of the city’s industries and have been in operation for a long time. Bottle glass is manufactured here, besides three fourths of all the plate glass of the United States. Perhaps it is because bottles are made in Pittsburg that we find here also the largest cork factory in the world.
Pittsburg is proud of the fact that she handles more tons of freight in a year than any other city in the world. Indeed, the tonnage is greater than that of New York and Chicago taken together.
The old “point” between the rivers is filled with tall buildings. Inclined railways run up the steep bluffs on the further side of each river and lead to the beautiful streets and the homes where many of the people live. For Pittsburg is not all coal and furnaces and smoke, but has fine churches, the great Carnegie Library and Museum, and many schools. But it is mostly because of the coal and the rivers that we find here a splendid city.
Sixty-three miles down the Ohio river, on its left bank, is Wheeling, the largest city in West Virginia. The business streets lie close to the Ohio, and the houses extend up the steep slope to the east, while over a high ridge comes the old National Road from the valley of Wheeling creek. Wheeling was the goal of many heavily laden wagons in the days of the pike, and because of the river and many railroads has a large trade to-day. It was settled in 1770 and is one of the oldest towns on the river.
On the north bank of the great stream, in the southwest corner of Ohio, is the largest city on the river. As late as 1900 Cincinnati had a few thousand more people than Pittsburg, but a “greater Cincinnati” would not be so large as a “greater Pittsburg.”
In Cincinnati, as in Pittsburg, men do business on the low grounds by the river, where offices and mills and shops crowd one another, and the smoke of soft coal hangs as a cloud above. Business hours over, the well-to-do merchants climb out of the grimy town to the top of the bluffs, and there find, in a clearer air and along open and beautiful avenues, their comfortable homes. Down town the turbulent river sometimes comes up forty or fifty feet beyond its usual level and makes trouble in the busy city, but Mt. Auburn and Walnut Hills are disturbed neither by smoke nor by floods.
Rivers do not often flow in straight lines, and it is very common for them to change their courses along their flood plains. This habit of shifting belongs alike to great and small streams, whether the Mississippi or the brook in the meadow. The Ohio, like other rivers, often writes the letter S, and in so doing at this point has swung off from its old north bank, leaving a low plain with room enough for a hundred thousand people to carry on their business. There is always some good reason which has led to the settlement and growth of a town, and the history of Cincinnati shows no exception.
It was in early winter, 1788, when cakes of ice were already floating on the river, that a number of men sailing downstream stopped here and began a settlement. The place was not readily named. It is said that the matter was left to a frontier schoolmaster, and he did not lose the chance to show how much he knew. He saw that the Licking river comes into the Ohio on the Kentucky side just opposite. So he set down an L. He next remembered an ancient word os, meaning “mouth,” and he put that down. Then he considered that anti means “opposite” and that ville means “town.” So he wrote the whole name,—L-os-anti-ville,—Losantiville,—“the town opposite the mouth of Licking.”
We might wonder whether a town with a name like that would ever grow into a great city. It did not have to try, for it was not long before General St. Clair, who had come there, made fun of the name and insisted upon a new one. He and other officers of the American army had formed a society commemorating their experience in the Revolution, and in honor of the Roman patriot Cincinnatus had called themselves the Order of Cincinnati. St. Clair thought this a good name for the town, and Cincinnati it has been since that time.
The place has its nickname also, and its people like to call it the Queen City, which seems to go very well with Beautiful River. Another name, rarely used and not very pleasing, perhaps, to those who live there, is “Porkopolis,” which came from the fact that for forty years before the American Civil War more pork packing was done in Cincinnati than anywhere else in the country.
Sir Charles Lyell, an Englishman who saw Cincinnati in 1842, speaks of the “pork aristocracy,” explaining that he means the men that had grown rich by packing pork, and not the pigs that he saw running in the streets. This shows how new some of our large business centers are, though it would be a great mistake to suppose that pigs and cows now run loose in western cities. In those days such places were teaching the country how to “pack fifteen bushels of corn into a pig,” and how to send the produce of the farms to distant cities or other lands in such a way as to get the most money for the least freight.
When Charles Dickens visited this country many years ago he went to Cincinnati, and spoke well of the place. This was a great compliment, for the famous English story-teller was hard to suit when he was looking at anything American. If he could come back to Cincinnati now, he might find even more to please and surprise him.
Cincinnati has always made much use of the river. There were little boats in which the owners carried notions and such things as a country store sells, peddling them from one settlement to another along the banks. There were barges and flatboats bearing families and farm produce. Then came steamboats, which carried everything,—passengers, grain, coal, merchandise, and even circuses and menageries. We can imagine the excitement among the small boys of a river town when the circus boat told of its arrival by the fierce blast of a loud steam whistle. There are steamboats yet and a busy river front, but great railroads center here, and trains run to Pittsburg and Philadelphia, Cleveland and New York, Chicago and St. Louis, Nashville and New Orleans. A vast business is done. There are many schools, and to-day Cincinnati can boast of her music, of her pictures and museums, and of the fine pottery that she makes. She has thrown off the schoolmaster’s clumsy name, she has many better things than pork, and she is widely known as one of America’s great cities.
An early writer says that the Ohio is “by far the noblest river in the universe.” He writes this in the beginning of a history of Louisville, a book which was printed in 1819. This in itself shows that Louisville is one of the old cities of the Ohio valley. It is not so large as Cincinnati or Pittsburg, but it is the chief city of the great state of Kentucky.
The old boatmen, finding that the current was rapid at a certain point, called it the “falls of the Ohio.” A ledge of hard rocks in the bed of the river caused the rapids and made it no easy task to navigate boats. Finally a canal was dug by which the rapids might be avoided at low water.
It was this ledge in the river that started the town and finally made a city out of Louisville, for boats going in either direction naturally stopped at the falls. There was another reason, too, as we shall see when we learn something of the “Wilderness Road,” which crossed Kentucky from the eastern mountains and came out on the river at Louisville. Back from the river also lay the rich and fertile Blue Grass country for which Kentucky is famous.
The canal was ready to take steamboats around the ledge in 1831. Some of these boats had interesting names, such as the Enterprise, the Vesuvius, the Comet, the Volcano, the New Orleans, the Cincinnati, the Experiment, the Rifleman, and the Rising States.
It was a wonderful life on the river, and Louisville got her share of the gain of it, as she now shares the traffic of the railroads. To-day she is a rich and beautiful city of two hundred thousand people.