xt744j09w807 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt744j09w807/data/mets.xml Durrett, Reuben T. (Reuben Thomas), 1824-1913. 1893 books b92-46-26946441 English J.P. Morton, printers, : Louisville, Ky. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Louisville (Ky.) History. Centenary of Louisville : a paper read before the Southern historical association, Saturday, May 1st, 1880, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the city of Louisville as an incorporated town, under an act of tof the legislature of Virginia / by Reuben T. Durrett. text Centenary of Louisville : a paper read before the Southern historical association, Saturday, May 1st, 1880, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the city of Louisville as an incorporated town, under an act of tof the legislature of Virginia / by Reuben T. Durrett. 1893 2002 true xt744j09w807 section xt744j09w807 FILSON CLUB PUBLICATIONS ANO. S. THE CENTENARY OF LOUISVILLE A Paper read before the Southern Historical Association, Saturday, May ist, 188o, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE CITY OF LOUISVILLE AS AN INCORPORATED TOWN, UNDER AN ACT OF THE LEGISLATURE OF VIRGINIA. By REUBEN T. DURRETT, President of the Filson Club. LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY: JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY, fhters to 1te 5itzoi edtus. 1893 COPYRIGHTED BY REUBEN T. DURRETT, 1893 PRE FACE. T HE historical paper read by Reuben T. Durrett, President of the Filson Club, to the Southern Historical Association, May i, i88o, in commemora- tion of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the birth of Louisville, is here issued as No. 8 of the Filson Club publications. Last year, i892, the Club published "The Centenary of Kentucky" as Filson Club Publica- tions No. 7, and it is thought that "The Centenary of Louisville," the chief city of the State, will be a fitting companion. Mr. Durrett has revised this paper so as to free it from certain omissions and mistakes which appeared in the newspaper reports at the time it was delivered. It was too long for our daily papers to print in full, and the attempt to condense it not only de- stroyed its unity but marred it by important omissions. Its publication in full, with foot-notes and appendices, will restore an important historic document to what it was intended by the author. It can hardly fail thus published to be grateful to the descendants of the Preface. founders of the city whose names are mentioned, while it must be invaluable to the future historian. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that the future historian of Louisville and the biographer of its founders can not faithfully tell the story of the city and its pioneers without either this publication or the original sources from which its facts are taken, which sources are to a large extent in manuscript in the possession of the author. THOMAS SPEED, Secretary of the Filson Club. LOuISVILLE, Ky., i893. 4 CORRESPONDENCE. LOUISVILLE, KY., April 24, i88o. COL. R. T. DURRETT: Dear Sir: At a meeting of the Southern Historical Association, held last night, the undersigned were appointed a committee to invite you to read before our association, on next Saturday even- ing, May i, i88o, at eight o'clock. a paper upon the settlement and early history of Louisville, that being the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of our city. This request has been made with a desire to preserve for our association and for history all the valuable facts and incidents upon the subject which you, with a taste for such matters, have collected during all the years of your residence in this city, eminently qualifying you for this duty. Earnestly hoping that you will accept the invitation it affords us so much pleasure to convey, we are, etc., Yours very truly, E. H. McDONALD, JOHN S. JACKMAN, R. H. THOMPSON, Committee. LOUISVILLE, KY., April 24, I880. MESSRS. E. H. MCDONALD, J. S. JACKMAN, R. H. THOMPSON: Gentlemen: I have your communication of this morning, invit- ing me to read a paper before the Southern Historical Association next Saturday, the one hundredth anniversary of Louisville, as a 6 Correspondence. centennial address. While I would have preferred, if your rules had permitted, to deliver an address to reading a paper, it never- theless affords me great pleasure to accept the flattering invitation with which I am honored. Louisville for the last one hundred years is history, and yours being an historical association has very properly determined not to let its one hundredth anniversary pass without making it part of the society records. In the short time which I have I will, therefore, endeavor to prepare the best paper I can on Louisville for an hun- dred years, and read it before the Southern Historical Association next Saturday evening. Respectfully, R. T. DURRETT. The Centenary of Louisville. A T its May session, one hundred years ago, the Leg- islature of Virginia passed an act, which took effect on the first of May, I780, establishing the town of Louisville at the Falls of the Ohio. Previous to this date there was a settlement here known as the " Falls of Ohio," and indeed one known as Louisville, but to-day is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louisville as an incorporated town. In the barbarous ages of the world, periods of an hundred years came and went without any remarkable changes in the condition of man. Even under the lights of early civilization centuries dawned and faded without the effects produced in modern times by such periods. We of to-day, with the arts and sciences to help, crowd into a single year what our ancestors could accomplish only in very long periods of time. The contrast between the Louisville of i88o and the Louis- ville of 1780 is very great; but between our city of 8 The Centenary of Louisville. to-day and what it may be in i980 the contrast must be much greater. The lightning with which we speak and the iron horse on which we ride are but emblems of the rapid age in which we rush on to grand achieve- ments. As we stand at the distance of one hundred years from the incorporation of the town of Louisville at the Falls of the Ohio, and look back upon the changes that have occurred, the space of time that is involved naturally divides itself inito three periods: the first, anterior to the act of the Virginia Legislature giving Louisville legal existence; the second, the time during which the town was governed by trustees, and the third, the period in which as a city it has been sub- ject to mayors and councils under charters. Let us, in response to the suggestions of the occasion, recur to such events in each of these periods as may be worthy of the memory of the actors in them and explanatory of the changes which have brought our city from what it was to what it is. FIRST PERIOD. Arnterior to f[je Yirst of Wlay, 1780. PREHISTORIC RACES. W ERE we disposed to look deeply into the distant past, to peer into a time to the confines of which neither history nor tradition reaches, we have sonie evi- dence to show that when all was dark and unknown the place now occupied by the citizens of Louisville was possessed by a race of human beings who lived long upon the earth, progressed in some branches of the arts, and passed away without a history, a tradition, or a name. XWe call them M\ound-Builders, and besides attributing to themn certain tunmuli and works found upon the surface of the earth, pieces of pottery for domestic use, stone hatchets, flint arrow-heads, and numerous articles of use and ornament supposed to have been made by them have been found iningled with human bones, in sinking wells and excavating cellars, deep down below the present plane upon which Louisville now stands. In a large mound s which stood St. Paul's Church, on the northwest corner of Walnut and Sixth streets, stands on the site of a mound which also extended to the old Grayson House 2 to The Centenary of Louisville. at the intersection of Walnut and Sixth streets, and in another at the northeast corner of Main and Fifth streets, human bones, stone axes, flint arrow-heads, and different articles of use and ornament belonging to the paleolithic period were found. In cutting the channel of the canal around the Falls there were found in the alluvial deposit, twenty feet below the surface, a number of implements made of stone, and plummets made of the hematite of iron, and a hearth made of flat stones with the charred ends of wood upon it, and human bones near to it. In the lower part of the city, at the still greater depth of forty feet below the present surface, were found a stone hatchet and pestle near a hearth on which lay on the north. This mound, though not more than fifteen feet in height when first known, had a circumference of more than one hundred feet at its base. In 1821 it was dug down by Frederick W. Grayson, and the material used for filling up what was known as Grayson's Pond. This pond extended from WXAlmitt Almart to Green and free Sixth to Center strects, and --was uie Wr the attractions of the city in early times, on account of its clear water filled with fish and the fine forest trees that shaded its margins. In winter, when cov- ered with ice, it was the skating-rink of the city. In digging down this mound many prehistoric relics, such as axes, arrow-heads, pipes, pieces of pottery, etc., were found, also human bones almost gone to decay. The skull of a supposed "Mound-Builder" and a number of paleolithic specimens from this mound have been preserved and are now in the possession of the writer. The ground on which the old Grayson House stands is considerably above the street level, and is the only survival of this mound. The mound at the corner of Main and Fifth streets was of less dimen- sions than the one at the corner of Walnut and Sixth, and yielded fewer relics. This mound, however, was probably what determined the beginning The Cenlencary of Louisville. I I a stick of wood burnt in the middle across the hearth; and in a gravel pit at the corner of Fourteenth and Kentucky streets, at the depth of twenty-five feet below the surface, was found the tooth of a mastodon among human bones and implements of the Stone Age. Here we have facts from which the ethnologist might infer that man bad been here cotemporary with the mastodon; that a race of human beings dwelt where Louisville now stands, possibly before the Pyramids were built, and that we are now erecting a great city over the former habi- tation of men so long passed away that the dust of ages has accumulated to the depth of forty feet above the place that knows them no more forever. of lot-numbering in the city. Lot No. X was located at the northeast corner of Main and Fifth streets, where this mound stood. It was at first regarded as a natural hill by the pioneers, but was of such regular form as to attract attention to the place, and to determine the point where the city should Begin tO be 'ail, UO. 1iii U iL iuWeuiaLe vicinity were a large oak and a huge poplar, which cast their shadows upon it and added to the attractiveness of the locality. Michael Lacassagne, the first postmaster of Louisville, became the owner of lot No. i. after several previous owners had possessed it, and erected on it a beautiful French cottage, where he resided. He lived in lux- urious style and kept open house. It was his intention to preserve this mound as one of the picturesque features of his place, but he died in I797, and in 1802 the last remains of the mound were removed by Evan Williams, and the material used in equalizing the grade of Fifth Street between Main and the river. In removing it the flint arrow-heads, stone axes, pieces of pot- tery, and human bones found in it decided that it was an artificial mound and not a natural hill. I2 The Centenary of Louisville. THE INDIAN OCCUPANCY. The Indians who claimed the possession of the land swhen the first settlers camie to the Falls of the Ohio had dispossessed the first occupants at a period too remote for history, but their traditions tell us that the last great battle between the red mien and the "long ago people" wras fought on Sandy Island, at the Falls of the Ohio. Here and at Clarksville, on the opposite side of the river, the first settlers found great quantities of human bones in the confusion in which the last struggle for life would naturally have left themi, and the Indians claimed that these were the bones of the " long ago people" extermi- nated by their ancestors. THE INDIANS' GREAT PARK. When the first settlers of Louisville came to the Falls of the Ohio the whole State of Kentucky, except that portion known as the Barrens,' was covered by the pri- rlThe Barrens are laid down on Filson's niap of 1784 as lying between Salt River on the north, Green River on the south, the knobs of the Mul- draugh range on the east, and the Ohio River on the west. Here was a vast treeless region covered with coarse grass Lhat grew as high as a man on horseback, and over which roamed great herds of buffalo and deer. It was thought to have been caused by the burning of the trees by the Indians for the purpose of securing pasturage for these animals. This would seem to The Centenary of Louisville. '3 meval forest and set aside as the hunting-ground of the Indians. No wigwam stood within its boundaries and no crop of maize grew upon its soil. It was a park ded- icated to the different tribes for hunting and fishing, and no human habitation anywhere desecrated this com- mon right to the forest and stream. A great flood in the Ohio caused the Indians to erect a village in Ken- tucky, opposite to the mouth of the Scioto, about the middle of the last century; but it passed away before Louisville was settled, leaving the great park undis- turbed. It was such a park as no civilized nation had ever set aside for angling and the chase. From the have been the cause, from the fact that so soon as the Indians were driven from the country this region was covered with a new growth of young trees. The trees here are not so large as in other parts of the forests of Kentucky, because they have had but about a century of growth. Along the water- courses, however, where the original trees were protected from the fire, there are some of the giants of the original forest yet to be seen. It is diicult to understand how the Indians could have set fire to an original forest; but if this original forest had been once destroyed by drouth, insects, or any other agent, it is easy to conceive how they might have kept new trees from growing by the use of fire. WV\hatever mnay have becn the original cause of the Barrens, they were there cotemporaneous with the Indians, and when the Indians were gone the trees began to grow. When Christopher Gist was on his way down the Ohio to select lands for the Ohio Company, in 1750, he stopped at the mouth of the Scioto River and noted in his journal a Shawnee town on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, containing about forty houses. George Croghan, in his journal of 1765, says this town on the Kentucky side was built on the high lands of Kentucky by the Indians because of a great flood in the Ohio, which rose nine feet over the banks on1 the opposite side of the river and rendered uninhabitable the [4 The Centenary of Louisville. rugged mountains, that walled it in on the east, to the mighty Mississippi and the lovely Ohio, which bound it on the west and north, there was a succession of lovely plains and gentle hills and smiling valleys and dark for- ests and sunny canebrakes in which game of every kind abounded. There were herds of buffalo and droves of deer and flocks of turkeys on the hills and plains and in the valleys such as mortal eye had not elsewhere seen, and in the rivers and streams winding through every part of the land there were shoals of fish that it seemed could never be exhausted. old Shawnee town which stood there. The banks on which this old Shawnee town stood, on the north side of the river, were forty feet high, so that this flood must have risen to a height of about fifty feet at the mouth of the Scioto. Croghan says that during the French and Indian War the Indians abandoned their Kentucky town for fear of the Virginians, and rebuilt on the plains of the Scioto. James McAfee was there in I773, and noted in his journal of that date that some of the houses built of logs, with board roofs, doors, and chim- ney-s, wars jut standing, though not ...habited. lie specarks of the hou-ses as- of the style usually built by the French, and it is probable that this Kentucky towil was of joint French and Indian origin. Another Indian town in Ken- tucky is laid down on the Pownal edition of the Evans map of 1755. It is called Eskippakithiki, and is between the Kentucky and Licking rivers. The Shawnees at an early date no doubt had other villages in Kentucky, as indi- cated by the Indian Old Fields in Clark County and other remains elsewhere. Dr. Franklin, in his answer to the report of the Lords Commissioners, in I772, stated that the Shawnees had a large town on the Kentucky River in I752, and another opposite to the mouth of the Scioto in 1755. All, however, had van- ished before our pioneers settled in Kentucky. Nothing remained to indicate previous occupancy that was so conspicuous as the mysterious earthworks of the Mound-Builders. The Centenary of Louisville. I5 The work of the first settlers of Louisville was not therefore to dispossess a prior people of their ancestral homes, but to turn the barrens and forests in which they hunted into the farms and cities of civilization, and to make the noble rivers in which they fished the highways of commerce. Our ancestors found here in I773, On the high bank of a noble river, a fine site for a city, with a genial sky above and a generous soil around, which was unoccupied, and at most only visited at long intervals by roving bands of savages in search of game, or on the lookout for beings of their own kind on whom to make war. LA SALLE THE DISCOVERER OF LOUISVILLE. In the year i8o8, while digging the foundation of the great flouring mill of the Tarascons in that part of Louisville known as Shisppiugport, it becamle ilecessary Robert Cavalier de La Salle was a Frenchman, born at Rouen in x643. He was of an honorable Burgher family, possessed of both wealth and political influence. He was educated for the priesthood of the Jesuits, but when his education was completed, and he had reached the years of manhood, he found himself utterly unfitted for the duties of the followers of Loyola. There were blended in his nature an invincible inclination to think and to act for himself, and this was not compatible with the Jesuits' rule, which required all subor- dinates to follow the thoughts of their superiors. He left the Jesuits in early manhood and made his way to Canada, in North America, in i666. He prob- ably came to this country for the purpose of being an explorer, and with the hope of finding a water-way across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. He r6 The Centenary of Louisville. to remove a large sycamore tree, the trunk of which was six feet in diameter, and the roots of which penetrated the earth for forty feet around. Under the center of the trunk of this tree was found an iron hatchet, which was so guarded by the base and roots that no human hand could have placed it there after the tree grew. It made important discoveries, among which were the Ohio and Illinois rivers, and was the first to descend the Mississippi from the Illinois River to the Gulf. After a failure to find the mouth of the Mississippi by sea, he attempted to reach Canada by land, and was murdered by his own employes, in i687, on a branch of Trinity River in Texas. ` This hatchet when found passed into the hands of Jared Brooks, an early engineer and journalist of Louisville. His plan of a canal around the Falls, drawn in i8o6, was substantially adopted when the canal was made, a quarter of a century later. He was the author of two of the best maps of Louisville, one in i8o6 and the other in i812. We are indebted to him for the only scien- tific account we have of the earthquake of I8I2, which formed Reelfoot Lake, and changed the face of the country in the southwestern portion of the State. He was for several years editor of the Louisville Gazette, and was noted for his learning upon almost every subject. He died in i8i6, and after his death there were found among his papers crayon likenesses of many of our most eminent pioneers, and drawings of a number of the early buildings of the city. lie seems to have contemplated and been at work upon an illustrated history of Louisville, but died before finishing it. He was a man of sufficient learning to know the value of this hatchet as an historic souvenir, and to him it is possible its preservation is due. He got it from Mr. Tarascon, on whose premises it was found, and afterwards passed it to Dr. McMurtrie, who men- tioned it in his history of Louisville. When Dr. McMurtrie returned to Phila- delphia it passed from him to William Marshall, who sold it to the present owner. It is seven inches long and five inches wide across the cutting edge. It is of light make, and seems to be of French nianufacture. When found it was almost consumed by rust, but the flakes which came off when it was exposed to the air have been re-cemiented with shellac, and the hatchet thus restored to its original appearance. RENE-ROBERT CAVALIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE. The Discoverer (If the Site of Louisville. 11 L This page in the original text is blank. The Centenary of Louisville. 17 must have occupied the spot where it was found when the tree began to grow. The hatchet was made by bend- ing a flat bar of iron around a cylinder until the two ends met, and then welding them together and hammer- ing them to a cutting edge, leaving a round hole at the bend for a handle. The annulations of this tree were two hundred in number, thus showing it to be two hun- dred years old according to the then mode of computa- tion. Here was a find which proved to be a never-ending puzzle to the early scientists of the Falls of the Ohio. The annulations of this tree made it two hundred years old, and so fixed the date earlier than any white man or user of iron was known to have been at the falls. One thought that Moscoso, the successor of De Soto, in his wanderings up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, might have entered the Ohio and left the hatchet there in 1542; another, that it might have come from the Spaniards who settled St. Augustine in i565; another, that the Spaniards who went up the Ohio in i669 in search of silver might have left it where it was found; and another, that Marquette, when he discovered the Upper Mississippi in i673, or La Salle, when he sailed down to its mouth in i682, might have given the hatchet to an Indian, who left it at the Falls. But from these reasonable conjectures their learning and imagination soon led these savants 3 The Centenary of Louisville. into the wildest theories and conjectures. One thought that the Northmen, whoni the Sagas of Sturleson made discoverers of Amnerica in the eleventh century, had brought the hatchet to this country; another, that Prince Madoc, who left a principality in Wales in the twelfth century for a home in the western wilderness, might have brought it here; and another, that it might have been brought here by those ancient Europeans whom Diodorus and Pausanius and other classical writers assure us were in communication with this country in ancient times. One of these learned ethnologists finally went so far as to advance the theory of the Egyptian priests, as related by Plato, that the autochthons of our race brought it here before the Island of Atlantis, lying between Europe and America, went down in the ocean and cut off all further communication between the continents.t See Antendix A. t The philosophers of Louisville who so learnedly discussed the iron hatchet were men of the highest standing in their day. They were Louis A. Tarascon, the author of several pamphlets and newspaper articles published here in early years; Jared Brooks, an accomplished engineer, scientist, and journalist; Fortunatus Cosby, a learned lawyer and Judge of the Jefferson Cir- cuit Court; Richard Ferguson, an eminent physician and surgeon; Joshua Vail, associate editor and owner of the Farmers' Library, the first newspaper pub- lished in Louisville; John J. Audubon, the distinguished ornithologist and author; James C. Johnston, a learned physician and accomplished scholar, and William Marshall, an antiquarian. Dr.Johnston was the youngest of the party, but he made up in brains and learning what he lacked in years. William Marshall made no pretensions to culture, but he was an antiquarian, and got t8 The Centenary of Louisville. This hatchet, however, really furnished no occasion for such strained conjectures and wild speculations. If the sycamore under which it was found was two hundred years old, as indicated by its annulations, it must have begun to grow about the time that Jamestown in Virginia and Quebec in Canada were founded. It would have been no unreasonable act for an Indian or white man to have brought this hatchet from the English on the James, or from the French on the St. Lawrence, to the Falls of the Ohio in i6o8, just two hundred years before it was dis- covered by removing the tree that grew over it. The known habit of the sycamore, however, to make more than one annulation in years particularly favorable to growth suggests that two hundred annulations do not necessarily mean that many years. If we allow about fifty per cent of the life of the tree to have been during admission to the learned circle by the curious specimens and souvenirs he was always finding and showing. He got hold of a translation of the Timaeus of Plato, and became a convert to the theory of the Sunken Continent as related to Solon by the Egyptian priests. It was he who suggested that the hatchet might have come from the Island of Atlantis before it went down and cut off all communication between the Eastern and Westeru hemispheres. He lived to extreme old age, and supported himself in the pinching poverty of his last years by the sale of the souvenirs and specimens he had collected when in better circumstances. He managed to get possession of this old hatchet when Dr. McMurtrie returned to Philadelphia, and held it for a long time as the gem of his little collection. He finally sold it to secure, as he stated, bread to save him from starvation. I9 20 The Centenary of Louisville. years exceptionally favorable to its growth, and assign double annulations to these favorable years, we shall have this tree to have made its two hundred annulations in about one hundred and thirty-nine years, and to have sprung from its seed and to have begun its growth about the year i669 or i670, when La Salle, the great French explorer, is believed to have been at the Falls of the Ohio. We have no account of any one at the Falls in i6o8, or about this time, to support the conjecture that it might have come from Jamestown or Quebec; but we have La Salle at this place in i669 or i670, and it is not unreasonable that he should have left it here at that time. In this sense the old rusty hatchet, which is fortunately preserved, becomes interesting to us all for its connec- tion with the discovery of Louisville. It is a souvenir of the first white man who ever saw the Falls of the Ohio. It is a memento of Robert Cavalier de La Salle, the discoverer of the site of the city of Louisville. 1 Thcrc is no little confusion about the time that La Salle was at the Falls of the Ohio. That he was the discoverer of the Ohio River, and descended it to the Falls in i669 or i670, is generally conceded; but whether he was at the Falls in 1669 or i670 is in doubt. Francis Parkman, the learned historian, with all the lights of modern research before him, was to the last in doubt whether it was i669 or i670. I have no means of positively determining whether it was in i669 or i670, but I want a fixed date for the discovery of the site of Louis- ville, and can afford to reason on the subject. I believe that La Salle was on the site of Louisville late in the fall or early in the winter of 1669, and that the evidence that we have will justify this conclusion. He is known to have been The Cen/enary of Louisville. 2I OTHER WHITE PERSONS EARLY AT THE FALLS. After La Salle discovered the Falls in i669 or i670, no white man is known to have done more than to pass the site in ascending or descending the Ohio, as did the French in military movements, and the traders in going from place to place, for nearly one hundred years. In I766 Captain Thomas Hutchins was at the Falls of the at the head of Lake Ontario on the last of September, 1669, on his way to the discovery of the Ohio River. This would allow him two months to find the Ohio and descend it to the Falls before the beginning of winter. What La Salle himself says of the Falls leaves the impression that lie visited the rapids when the river was low. There have been years when the low water of the Ohio was prolonged through the fall and into the early winter for want of rains, and it is probable that 1669 was this kind of year. La Salle speaks of the Falls as a "tombe de fort haul," a sight which he could only have seen at low water, if indeed he could have seen it at all. The place where the hatchet was found was oln the Shippingport point, from which, looking in a northwest directin alove; the lau U f Goose isiand, a perpendicular fall of eight or more feet was to be seen, and was often seen at a later date and until the United States Government began to change the character of the falls. It is not likely that this fall could have been seen in the winter of i670, when the water was presumably high, and La Salle was in Canada in the spring of i670. I am of the opinion, therefore, that the discoverer of the Ohio and of the site of Louisville made his discovery late in the fall or early in the winter of the year 1669. Captain Thomas Hutchins was a native of New Jersey, where he was born in 1730. He was an accomplished engineer, and was the only official geogra- pher the United States ever had. He received the title of "Geographer Gen- eral" while with General Greene in South Carolina. In the Revolutionary War he promptly took sides with the Colonies, and on this account was impris- oned in England, and lost the greater part of his fortune while incarcerated. 22 The Centenary of Louisville. Ohio, and made a sketch of the place which was en- graved for his Topographical Description of Virginia, etc., published at London in I778. This picture of the Falls did more to call attention to the future site of Louisville than all the previous descriptions of traders and adventurers and explorers combined. It was a strik- ing picture of a broad river, with sunny islands here and there in its midst, and noble forest trees standing upon its shores and casting their huge shadows in its crystal waters. It is a striking picture even to this day, pre- senting as it does the original Ohio, with its forest-clad islands and shores, and its ample waters rolling over the rocky wall that causes its rapids, before a tree has been cut on its shore