Departure from Shippingsport—Velocity of the current—Troy—Owensville—Indigence of the hunting emigrants—Mounds—Evansville—The Diamond island—Shawneetown—Grandeur of the river and the uncultivated state of the surrounding country—Fort Massac—Arrival at the mouth of the Ohio—Delayed by the ice of the Mississippi—A visit from the Delaware and Shawnee Indians—Observations on their mutual jealousy and improvidence.

On the 7th, towards evening, I left Shippingsport in the flat-boat which I had purchased, accompanied by an elderly gentleman and his son, who intended to proceed to New Orleans. The river had now taken a sudden and favourable rise of eight or ten feet perpendicular. We floated all night, keeping an alternate watch, and before the expiration of 24 hours, on the 8th, the current alone had carried us without labour near 80 miles! We accompanied another vessel of the same kind, and, for mutual convenience, our boats, according to custom, were lashed together side by side, thus also facilitating our progress by obtaining a greater scope of the current.

9th.] We continued at the same rate, floating along without any labour, except that of occasionally rowing out from the shore, or avoiding submerged trunks of trees, called snags or sawyers, as they are either stationary or moveable with the action of the current; by the French they are called chicos. In the night {38} we passed the town of Troy, an insignificant handful of log-cabins, dignified by this venerable name; here we stopped a few minutes to unload some salt, which, in consequence of the scarcity, incident to the low stage of water, sold at four dollars per bushel. Nearly all the salt which supplies this country descends the Kanhaway.

On the 10th we arrived at Owensville,⁠[42] more commonly called Yellow Banks, from the ochraceous appearance of the argillaceous friable bank of the river. This is another insignificant cluster of log-cabins, and the seat of a county. Flour sold here at 10 dollars per barrel. In consequence of the want of mills, they depend altogether on the upper country for their supplies of this important article. Mills are much wanted, and, in order even to obtain corn-meal, every one has to invent something of the kind for himself. At this place the store-keepers were busily collecting pork for the market of New Orleans, at the rate of five dollars per hundred, in exchange for dry-goods and groceries. No other produce appeared in this place. No orchards are yet planted, and apples were worth one dollar and a half the bushel.

We floated as usual till towards midnight, but the north-west wind arising, at length put a stop to our progress. Having proceeded about 18 miles below Owensville, we endeavoured to land on the Kentucky side, but, in the attempt, ran an imminent risk of grounding on an extensive bar; with considerable labour we rowed our unmanageable flat to the opposite shore, where we found deep water, and a good harbour from the wind.

11th.] About day-break we were accosted by a backwoods neighbour, anxious for a dram of whiskey, which we had foreseen and provided for. We were detained all day by the wind, and the hunters went out in quest of turkeys. The improvidence of these hunting farmers, is truly remarkable: annually {39} mortgaging their produce for the meanest luxuries of civilized life; still destitute of flour, of the produce of the orchard, of country spirits, and, indeed, of coffee and sugar for a great part of the year; at the same time, that they might become independent, with even moderate industry.

Potatoes are very indifferent in this country, but pulse and all kinds of grain excellent and productive.

Here, at Mountplace ⁠[43] as it is called, there are two or three Indian mounds, upon one of which our visitor had built his house, and in digging had discovered abundance of human bones, as well as several stone pipes, and fragments of earthen ware.

12th.] About 9 o’clock, we pushed out and proceeded. Towards evening, 15 miles from Hendersonville,⁠[44] in Indiana, we passed a small town called Evansville,⁠[45] apparently a county seat, by the appearance of a court house. We continued to float throughout the night, which was very fine and moonlight, but cold, the thermometer being down at 20°. We passed Henderson in the night, and, about 5 o’clock in the morning of the 13th, came in sight of the large and beautiful broad island, called the Diamond, with the river, on either side of it, apparently a mile in breadth. At two intervals of 10 miles each, we had passed two other islands, and about one o’clock, found ourselves carried by good fortune, and at an easy rate, opposite to the Wabash⁠[46] and its island, which mark the commencement of the territory of Illinois.

From Owensville, cane begins to be tall and abundant. The prospect of an approaching storm caused us to come to shore at an early hour, where we remained for the night, having our boat tied to a stout branch or stem of the Borya acuminata,⁠[47] which grows here in abundance, and is nearly as thorny as a {40} sloe bush, sending up many straight stems from the same root.

14th.] We rode over to Shawneetown,⁠[48] a handful of log cabins, with some of them shingled, commanding an agreeable view of the river, but not situated beyond the reach of occasional inundation. I learned, on inquiry, that Mr. Birkbeck’s settlement⁠[49] was not so unhealthy as had been reported, and that it was continually receiving accessions of foreigners. After floating some distance, we came up with three other flat boats, and lashing to them proceeded all night. The river is here very wide and magnificent, and checquered with many islands. The banks at Battery Rock, Rock in the Cave,⁠[50] and other places, are bold and rocky, with bordering cliffs. The occidental wilderness appears here to retain its primeval solitude; its gloomy forests are yet unbroken by the hand of man, they are only penetrated by the wandering hunter, and the roaming savage.

15th and 16th.] Got down below Fort Massac,⁠[51] and remained ashore most part of the night, being detained by the wind. On the night and morning of the 15th, the thermometer fell to 10°. In a cypress swamp, near to the shore, grew the Gleditsia monosperma and the Cephalanthus, with pubescent leaves and branchlets, which grows in Georgia and Louisiana, also the Asclepias parviflora.

17th.] Between 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we arrived at the mouth of the Ohio, and were considerably mortified on perceiving the Mississippi to be full of floating ice. Governed by the conduct of the boats which we had for three days accompanied, we came to on the Kentucky shore, and remained in company with several other boats, this and the whole of the following day.

The summit of the bank, at the foot of which we had landed, was surmounted by an almost impenetrable and sempervirent cane brake; we measured several {41} canes upwards of 30 feet in height. These wilds afford but little gratification to the botanist, their extreme darkness excluding the existence of nearly every herbaceous plant. Among the trees, we still continue to observe the coffee bean (Gymnocladus canadensis), now loaded with legumes, the seeds of which, when parched, are agreeable to eat, but produce a substitute for coffee greatly inferior to the Cichorium.

The whole country here, on both sides of the Mississippi and the Ohio, remains uninhabited in consequence of inundation, and abounds with various kinds of game, but particularly deer and bear, turkeys, geese, and swans, with hosts of other aquatic fowls; though, with the exception of the white pelican, they are such as commonly exist in many other parts of the Union.

While amusing ourselves on the 17th, we were visited by a couple of the Delaware Indians, and shortly after by a hunting party of Shawnees,⁠[52] who reside some miles west of St. Louis. I invited one of them into our cabin, and prevailed upon him to take supper, with which he appeared to be well satisfied and grateful. On the following day, a number of the Shawnees came with our evening guest, and desired to purchase gun-powder. They behaved with civility, and almost refused to taste of spirits, but their reluctance was at length overcome by some of our neighbours, and the night was passed at their camp with yells and riot. Although the Delawares and Shawnees are proximately allied to each other, yet we perceive the existence of that jealousy among them, which has ever been so fatal to the interest of the aborigines, from the conquest of Cortes to the present moment. The Delawares cautioned me against the Shawnees, among whom they were continually hunting, and stigmatized them as rogues; I found them, however, all equally honest in their dealings, as far as I had any intercourse with them; still the history {42} of the Shawnees, on many occasions, has long proved the truth of the character which is given of them by the Delawares. Scarcely any of the Indian tribes have migrated so often and so far, as the restless and intriguing Shawnees; who, since their first discovery on the banks of the Savannah, in Georgia, have, in the space of a century, successively migrated through the western states to the further bank of the Mississippi. Ever flying from the hateful circle of civilized society, which, probably in their own defence, they have repeatedly scourged, so as, indeed, to endanger their safety; averse to agriculture and systematic labour, they still depend upon the precarious bounty of the chase for their rude subsistence. Retreating into the forests of the western interior, according to their own acknowledgment destitute of lands, they are reduced to the misery of craving the favour of hunting ground from the Cherokees and Osages,⁠[53] excepting the uninhabitable wilds of the Mississippi, which, as in former times, still continue the common range of every tribe of native hunters.

These Indians possess the same symbolical or pantomimic language, as that which is employed by most of the nations with which I have become acquainted. It appears to be a compact invented by necessity, which gives that facility to communication denied to oral speech.