CHAPTER XVI
Little and Big Hockhocking rivers--Belleville, and Mr. Wild on Mr. Avery’s large farm--Devil’s hole--Shade river--Buffington’s island--Neisanger’s.
We dropped down the stream gently three miles, to the end of Blennerhasset’s island, a little beyond which, on the Ohio shore, we observed a very good looking two story brick house, which as we had been informed, is an excellent tavern owned and kept by Mr. Miles, but we were not tempted to stop, as we had already breakfasted on bread and milk in our skiff. Two miles and a quarter below Miles’s we passed Little Hockhocking river on the right. It is about twenty-five yards wide, and has a wooden bridge across it, and on its right bank is a large square roofed house, handsomely situated.
A mile and a half below Little Hockhocking, we saw on our right a remarkable cavern on the side of a craggy hill, and four miles lower, having passed Newbury and Mustapha’s islands, the latter of which is above a mile in length, and partly cultivated, we came to big Hockhocking river on the right.[90] It is only about thirty yards wide at its mouth, nevertheless it is navigable for keels and other small craft {112} nearly seventy miles, a little above which highest point of navigation, is situated the flourishing town of New Lancaster.
Two miles and a half below Hockhocking a rivulet called Lee’s creek, puts in from the Virginia side, and half a mile further on the same side, is the village of Belleville, or Belle-prè, finely situated on a high bank, commanding a good view of the river both ways. There are here only four or five cabins occupied by hunters and labourers, and a tolerably good wooden house owned by a Mr. Avery from New-London in Connecticut, who purchased a tract here of five miles front on the river, and commenced this settlement about eleven years ago, but going largely into ship building, he was so unfortunate in that business, that in consequence he is now confined for debt in Wood county gaol.
A Mr. Wild, from Durham in Connecticut, who has been five years here, resides in Mr. Avery’s house, and cultivates the farm, which is on a handsome plain running back from the river, on which he has this season seventy acres of corn and fifty of wheat, besides a large proportion of meadow. He was very civil to us, insisting with much hospitality on our taking some refreshment.
Last fall Mr. Avery’s barn with two thousand bushels of grain, several stacks of grain, and a horse, grist and saw mills, were burnt by incendiaries, who, though known, could not be brought to justice for want of positive proof.
From Little Hockhocking the right bank is hilly and broken, and the left an extensive bottom; both sides very thinly inhabited, to ten miles below Belleville, in the last seven we not having observed a single {113} cabin, though the land is level and rich. I cannot account for the right shore not being settled, as it is part of the Ohio Company’s purchase; but the reason on the Virginia side is, that the heirs of general Washington to whom that valuable tract descended on his death, ask for it no less than ten dollars per acre, so that it will probably remain in its savage state as long as land can be purchased cheaper in its neighbourhood, notwithstanding its good situation and its excellent quality.[91]
After leaving Belleville we saw several bald eagles hovering about us. They are about the size of large crows, and when on the wing have their tails spread out in the form of a crescent.[92]
About the middle of this uninhabited tract, we observed on our right a very remarkable large cavern called Devil’s hole: It is in the face of a rock about half way up a steep hill close to the river. About fifty rods further on the same hand we passed Shade river, which is a considerable stream, and apparently very deep. During the war with the Indians, a detachment of the Kentucky militia, ascended this river, landed and destroyed some Indian encampments, but effected nothing of moment.
Five miles below Shade river, we came to Buffington’s island, which is partly cultivated and is about two miles long. Though that on the left is the ship channel, we chose the one on the right, as it presented a long narrow vista, which promised the strongest current: We found it however very shallow, but beautifully picturesque. The river above the island is about a quarter of a mile wide, but below, it is contracted to about two hundred yards, and four miles lower, it is only one hundred and twenty.
Though the river continues narrow, yet probably from the depth of its bed the velocity of the current was not increased for a mile and a quarter further to {114} Peter Neisanger’s fine farm, where we stopped at half past seven o’clock.[93]
Fastening our skiff to a tree, we ascended the steep sloping bank to the house, where we were received with cautious taciturnity by Mrs. Neisanger, whose ungracious reception would have induced us to have proceeded further, had not the evening been too far advanced for us to arrive at better quarters before dark; and besides the state of our stomachs rendered us insensible to an uncourteous reception: We determined therefore to make our quarters good, though a few minutes after, friend A----, repented of our resolution, on seeing a figure scarcely meriting the name of human approaching him, where he had gone alone in quest of some of the males of the family. It had the appearance of a man above the middle age, strong and robust, fantastically covered with ragged cloathing, but so dirty that it was impossible to distinguish whether he was naturally a white or an Indian--in either case he equally merited the appellation of _savage_. A----, accosted him as lord of the soil, but he did not deign any reply, on which he returned to me, where I was in the boat adjusting our baggage, to consult with me whether we had not better proceed farther; but first resolving to make one more attempt, we again mounted the bank and found two men with rifles in their hands sitting at the door, neither of whose aspects, nor the circumstance of their being armed, were very inviting: As however we did not see the strange apparition which A----, had described to me, we ventured to accost them.
The elder of the two was Neisanger.--Though he did not say us “_nay_” to our request of supper, his “_yea_” was in the very extreme of _bluntness_, and without either the manner or expression which sometimes merits its having joined to it the adjective _honest_.
{115} They laid aside their rifles, and supper being announced by the mistress of the cabin, we made a hearty meal on her brown bread and milk, while she attended her self-important lord with all due humility, as Sarah did Abraham; which patriarchal record in the scriptures, is perhaps the original cause of a custom which I have observed to be very common in the remote parts of the United States, of the wife not sitting down to table until the husband and the strangers have finished their meal.
During supper, Mr. Neisanger gradually relaxed from his blunt and cautious brevity of speech, and we gathered from him that he had been a great hunter and woodsman, in which occupation, he said that one man may in one season kill two hundred deer and eighty bears.
He had changed his pursuit of the wild inhabitants of the forest about nine years ago, for an agricultural life. Since that time he had cleared a large tract of land, had planted three thousand fruit trees on his farm, and had carried on a distillery of whiskey and peach brandy, for the first of which he gets seventy-five cents per gallon, and for the last a dollar.
After supper we took leave of this Nimrod of the west without much regret, as our seats while under his roof had not been the most easy to us, and we returned to our boat with more pleasure than we had done heretofore.
We betook ourselves to rest on our platform, lulled to repose by the mournful hooting of the owl, whose ill omened note was amply compensated for by the delightful melody of the red bird, who awoke us at early dawn with his grateful welcome to the returning day.[94]
From hence to Clarksburgh in Virginia is only seventy-five miles.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] For the Hockhocking River, see Croghan’s _Journals_, vol. i of this series, p. 131, note 99.--ED.
[91] Washington admonished his executors in his will, not to dispose of these lands too cheaply, and suggested a sale price of ten dollars per acre. This particular tract became the property of six of his grand-nieces, two of whom (named Fitzhugh) later settled in the vicinity.--ED.
[92] The bald or white-headed eagle (_haliaëtus leucocephalus_), the American national symbol.--ED.
[93] Peter Neisanger (or Niswonger) joined the Marietta colony in 1790. He was employed thereby as a ranger, and the succeeding year gave timely warning to the people assembled at a church service of a threatened Indian raid.--ED.
[94] The red-bird was either the scarlet tanager (_piranga rubra_), or the cardinal grosbeak (_cardinalis virginianus_), both of which frequent the Ohio shores.--ED.
{116} CHAPTER XVII
Old-town creek, and a floating mill--Take two passengers, both curious characters--Laughable anecdote of a panick--Some of the customs of the backwoodsmen--Their fondness for, and mode of fighting--Their disregard of being maimed, illustrated by an anecdote--Le Tart’s falls--Graham’s station--Jones’s rocks.
Proceeding on Saturday 25th July at 5 in the morning--at six we were three miles below Neisanger’s, abreast of Old-town creek on the right, and a floating mill owned by an Irishman named Pickets. These kind of mills are of a very simple construction--the whole machinery being in a flat, moored to the bank, and the stones being put in motion by the current. They have but little power, not being capable of grinding more than from fifteen to twenty bushels of wheat per day.
We were here hailed by two men who offered to work their passage to the falls. We took them on board, and one proved to be one Buffington, son to the owner of Buffington’s island, from whom Pickets had purchased his farm and mill, and the other was an eccentrick character, being an old bachelor, without any fixed place of abode, residing sometimes with one farmer and sometimes with another, between Marietta and Galliopolis, and making a good deal of money by speculating in grain, horses, hogs, cattle, or any thing he can buy cheap and sell dear.
Buffington was a very stout young man, and was going to the falls to attend a gathering (as they phrase it in this country) at a justice’s court, which squire Sears, who resides at the falls, holds on the last Saturday of every month: He supposed there would be sixty or seventy men there--some plaintiffs, and some defendants in causes of small debts, actions of defamation, assaults, &c. and some to wrestle, fight, {117} shoot at a mark with the rifle for wagers, gamble at other games, or drink whiskey. He had his rifle with him and was prepared for any kind of frolick which might be going forward. He was principally induced to go there from having heard that another man who was to be there, had said that he could _whip_ him (the provincial phrase for beat.) After his frolick was ended he purposed returning home through the woods.
He related a laughable story of a panick which seized the people of his neighbourhood about two years ago, occasioned by a report being spread that two hundred Indians were encamped for hostile purposes on the banks of Shade river.
The Pickets’s and some others not accustomed to Indian war, forted themselves, and hired Buffington to go and reconnoitre. He hunted, and, to use his own language, _fooled_ in the woods three or four days; then returned late in the evening to his own house, and discharged his two rifles, giving the Indian yell after each, which so terrified the party forted at Pickets’s, that the centinels threw down their rifles, and ran into the river up to the belts of their hunting shirts. The whole party followed--crossed the Ohio in canoes, and alarmed the Virginia side by reporting that Buffington’s wife, and some others, who had not been forted, were shot and scalped by the Indians; but when the truth came out, they were much ashamed.
Buffington deals in cattle and hogs, which he occasionally drives to the south branch of the Potomack, where they find a ready market for the supply of Baltimore and the sea coast. The common price here is about three dollars per cwt.
Two or three years ago when bear skins were worth from six to ten dollars each, he and another man killed one hundred and thirty-five bears in six weeks.
{118} It may not be improper to mention, that the backwoodsmen, as the first emigrants from the eastward of the Allegheny mountains are called, are very similar in their habits and manners to the aborigines, only perhaps more prodigal and more careless of life. They depend more on hunting than on agriculture, and of course are exposed to all the varieties of climate in the open air. Their cabins are not better than Indian wigwams. They have frequent meetings for the purposes of gambling, fighting and drinking. They make bets to the amount of all they possess. They fight for the most trifling provocations, or even sometimes without any, but merely to try each others prowess, which they are fond of vaunting of. Their hands, teeth, knees, head and feet are their weapons, not only boxing with their fists, (at which they are not to be compared for dexterity, to the lower classes in the seaports of either the United States, or the British islands in Europe) but also tearing, kicking, scratching, biting, gouging each others eyes out by a dexterous use of a thumb and finger, and doing their utmost to kill each other, even when rolling over one another on the ground; which they are permitted to do by the byestanders, without any interference whatever, until one of the parties gives out, on which they are immediately separated, and if the conqueror seems inclined to follow up his victory without granting quarter, he is generally attacked by a fresh man, and a pitched battle between a single pair often ends in a battle royal, where all present are engaged.
A stranger who had kept aloof during a fray of this kind, when it was over, seeing a man with the top of his nose bit off, he approached him and commiserated his misfortune. “Don’t pity me,” said the noseless hero, “pity that fellow there,” pointing with one hand to another who had lost an eye, and {119} shewing the eye which he held triumphantly in the other.[95]
{120} Eight miles below Old-town creek we were carried through Le Tart’s falls at the rate of six knots an hour, but the rapid, which it ought to be called more properly than falls, is not more than half a mile long.
Captain or squire Sears’s house, opposite to which we landed our passengers, is very pleasantly situated on the left shore, commanding a view of two islands above the falls, the nearest one in cultivation,--the opposite shore variegated with low hills and valleys, woods, cultivated fields and farm houses, a new water mill which he is building on the right bank of the rapid, and the river below, taking a sudden bend from N. W. to N. E. by N.
A mile and a half lower down we observed a large barge on the stocks in the woods on the right bank.
Four miles from the falls we came to Graham’s station, which is a fine populous settlement, extending about three miles along the left bank of the river, from West creek to Wolfe’s farm house, which is charmingly situated on a cliff. The Ohio side opposite is also well settled.
On passing Wolfe’s we asked a man at the door who it was that lived there: He informed us, and {121} civilly invited us to land and quench our thirst at a fine spring on the beach; but we declined stopping, as we had filled our water cask at Pickets’s mill.
There is a ferry across the Ohio about the middle of Graham’s station, which connects a road from Big to Little Kenhawa, sixteen miles to the former and thirty to the latter.[96]
Nine miles below Wolfe’s, Jones’s rocks, on a hill on the right have a striking appearance. They are of freestone, bare, and heaped upon each other, resembling some of the old Turkish fortifications so numerous in the Levant.
On a small bottom between them and the river, in a very romantick situation, is a farm, seven years old, belonging to a Mr. Jones, who informed us that there is a vein of good coal about a quarter of a mile from his house.
This was the first house we had observed for the last eight miles, though the land on the Virginia side, owned by one Waggoner, seems to be of the first quality.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] This indeed is a most lamentable picture of the depravity of human nature, and might have applied better fifteen or twenty years ago than at present. But our author ought to have confined it to a _particular_ frontier, and to a _few_ individuals; for it is by no means the character of _all_ our backwoodsmen, nor are such ferocious and more than beast-like battles customary on the borders of all our frontier settlements. Nor can we believe even the more profligate among the class here spoken of, would _purposely_ meet (unless indeed in an actual state of warfare) to fight, to gouge, and to tear each others flesh to pieces in the manner described; but that fighting, gouging, &c. might be the _consequence_ of such meetings and carousings, we have little doubt, especially where whiskey is the common drink of the country. There are always a few diabolically wicked in all societies of men, rude or civilized; but it would be unjust to libel a _whole_ community because of the wickedness and profligacy of a _few_.
It is observable that European travellers frequently misrepresent us by giving for a _general_ character, that which is _particular_; hence they mislead their readers into the most monstrous blunders as respects the true features of our national character, while they do us a greater piece of injustice than they might have intended. As an instance of this the following quotation from “_Volney’s View of the United States_,” will suffice: Speaking of the Philadelphia mode of eating and drinking, he observes:
“At breakfast they deluge the stomach with a pint of hot water, slightly impregnated with tea, or slightly tinctured, or rather coloured, with coffee; and they swallow, almost without mastication, hot bread, half baked, soaked in melted butter, with the grossest cheese, and salt or hung beef, pickled pork or fish, all which can with difficulty be dissolved.
“At dinner they devour boiled pastes, called, absurdly, puddings, garnished with the most luscious sauces. Their turnips and other vegetables are floated in lard or butter. Their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste, imperfectly baked. To digest these various substances, they take tea, _immediately after dinner_, so strong that it is bitter to the taste, as well as utterly destructive of the nervous system. Supper presently follows, with salt meat and shell fish in its train. Thus passes the whole day, in heaping one indigestive mass upon another. To brace the exhausted stomach, wine, rum, gin, malt spirits, or beer, are used with dreadful prodigality.”
I am a native American, have passed through most of the American states, and never drank, nor saw drunk, at either publick or private table, “_tea immediately after dinner_,” nor never heard of a practice of the kind in any of the states, hence I think I have reason to conclude Mr. Volney _erroneous_ in giving this as the _general_ custom of a people; and think it probable he drew his conclusions from the _particular_ practice of a _few_ families, in which he might have lodged; and which might have altered their usual mode of eating and drinking, in order to accommodate the supposed habits of this great traveller, he being a native of France, where it is well-known coffee is much used after dinner. How much more would the publick be benefitted by the remarks of travellers on the manners and customs of countries, would they divest themselves of their prejudices, passions, and partialities, and confine themselves to the relation of simple truths. Methinks a traveller who intends to publish his travels, ought to be a _philosopher_, in the true sense of the word.--CRAMER.
[96] Rev. William Graham, who had been for twenty-one years president of the first academy west of the Blue Ridge, becoming imbued with a missionary spirit, bought six thousand acres of the Washington lands and attempted to found a Presbyterian colony thereon. He brought out several families in 1798, but returning the next year died at Richmond, whereupon his colonists grew discouraged and withdrew. The place, however, has retained to this day its name of Graham’s Station.--ED.