The frequency, and dreadful character, of
accidents by steam on the Western waters,
have, among other effects, very generally induced
the good people of the East to regard
an Ohio or Mississippi steamboat as nothing
better than a floating man-trap—a locomotive
volcano, on which Western ladies and
gentlemen take their seats for the purpose of
being blown into eternity.

After forming such a conception, and drawing
in his mind a suitable picture of the infernal-machine,
in which he is to take his
chance of a visit to the other world—a picture
of some clumsily constructed hulk, painted
over with flames and fiery devils, like the
San-benito of a prisoner of the Inquisition,

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

perhaps, also, begrimed with the blood of former
victims—the traveller is somewhat astonished
to find himself in a stately and splendidly
appointed barge, that might have served the
need of Cleopatra herself, and which will certainly
vie with, if it does not entirely surpass
in magnificence, the finest steamers he has
ever floated in, in any other part of the world.
His astonishment will increase, when, searching
out the commander, whom he expects to
discover picking his teeth with a bowie-knife,
or drinking grog out of a barrel, he lights
upon a very well behaved and companionable
personage, who does the honours of his vessel
with all courtesy, and declares he never
yet blew up a boat, and never even races, unless
when his passengers particularly request
it; when he finds the engineer oiling his pumprods,
instead of weighing down the safety-valve;
and the pilot industriously sighting his
distances, instead of shooting down strangers
on the shore. In short, after making many
more equally surprising discoveries, he will
at last come to the conclusion that the occurrence
of accidents in a great many Western
steamboats does not necessarily imply that
accidents must, or even may, happen in all;
and that he is, perhaps, as safe and has as

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

good reason to enjoy himself, during his voyage,
as if caged in the quietest “low-pressure”
on the Delaware.

When a man discovers that he may enjoy
himself, it is a very common consequence that
he will do so. And it is my impression, confirmed
by repeated enterprises in those formidable
vessels, that a man may enjoy himself
to as great, if not to greater advantage
in a Western steamboat than in any other
in the land. One chief reason of this is the
length of the voyage one commonly takes in
the Western boat, whereby travellers have
time to turn about them, to strike up friendships
with one another, and make the acquaintance
of the captain and officers, from
whom they may thus glean wayside anecdotes
and information, not to be gained in
shorter trips. Another reason is the general
frankness of manners which, a characteristic
of the West, all men seem naturally to fall
into, the moment they reach the West. But
perhaps the greatest reason of all will be
found in the peculiar structure of the Western
boat, which is so planned as to compel
travellers to congregate together in little
squads or knots, instead of in one great multitude,
whereby sociableness is in a manner

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

forced upon them. There is in her no great
gathering-place, like the quarter-deck of an
Eastern steamboat, where passengers huddle
together upon benches, to stare each other
sadly and bashfully in the face; but a great
number of smaller retiring places—the boiler-deck,
the social hall, and, above all, the
galleries, in which little groups of men, accidentally
met, find no difficulty in forming
themselves into agreeable parties.

If I were to add, that the fact of there
being no place of convocation in a Western
steamboat equally free to the ladies as to the
gentlemen, may be another great reason why
the latter so easily enjoy themselves, I do not
know that I should be guilty of a libel upon
either. The truth is, that men in America,
and especially in the West, are so egregiously
civil to all womankind, and carry their
courtesy to such excess of painful respect, as
to embarrass both themselves and the fair
objects of their reverence, so that they reciprocally
act as dampers upon each other;
and I believe, upon observation, that they
are, in general, after being a few moments together,
in any general place of assemblage,
as happy to fly each other, as schoolboys to
escape a good aunt who has been stuffing

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

them with excellent advice, instead of sugar-plums.

Of the voyage on the Mississippi I have
spoken in another place. The voyage on the
Ohio is infinitely more agreeable, La Belle
Rivière being rich in all those charms of bold
and varied scenery, of which the Father
Water is almost entirely destitute. One is
not here oppressed by a continual succession
of willows and cottonwoods springing from
swampy islands and quagmire shores, and a horizon
so low as to be ever concealed from the
eye. Beautiful hills, springing here from the
margin of the tide, there rising beyond cultivated
fields or gleaming towns, track the
course of the Ohio from its springs to its
mouth; and high bluffs, crowned with majestic
planes, shingled beaches, and lovely
islands, changing and shifting in myrioramic
profusion, present an ever changing series of
prospects, of strongly marked foregrounds
relieved against blue distances, so dear to
the eyes of painters and lovers of the picturesque.

Add to this that the Ohio has its storied
shores, its places of renown, its points to
which we can attach the memories of other
days; and we may imagine what pleasure

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

awaits the voyager on its bosom, who has
once succeeded, as, in general, he will very
easily do, in throwing aside all fears, and
thoughts, of half-burned boilers and desperately
weighted safety-valves.

For my own part, I can say that in no
river of the United States do I always more
confidently expect, or more uniformly experience,
the enjoyment of a steam excursion,
than on the upper Ohio; and I hold a trip, in
the dull season—that is, when the vessels are
not over-crowded with passengers—in a neat
little summer boat—if a slow one, so much
the better—with a pleasant captain, a civilized
cook, and good humoured companions—
whether the voyage be up or down—as
one of the most agreeable expeditions that
can well be taken.

On such an occasion, one is pretty sure of
finding companions both able and willing to
talk—men who possess in an uncommon degree
the intelligence and powers of conversation
so general in the West, who know
every man and thing in, and appertaining to,
their own states or districts, and every local
history and anecdote which a curious person
might desire to hear. One may even light,
at such times, upon an old pioneer and

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

founder of the West, an original colonist of Kentucky
or Ohio, a contemporary, perhaps, of
Boone and Clark, who, solicited by his junior
fellow-travellers, and warmed as much by
their interest in his conversation, as by his
own stirring recollections, can speak of the
days of the border, of the times and scenes
that tried men's souls, and pour a stream of
forest story, the fresher and more delightful
to his hearers for being thus drunk at the
fountain-head.

It was once my fortune, on such a voyage,
to meet such a story-teller, a venerable old
man who was acquainted with every point of
note on the river, and had descended it more
than forty years before, performing a voyage,
which—at that period, always dangerous—
was, in this case, attended with circumstances
peculiarly perilous and dreadful. His story,
interesting in itself, had, moreover, the additional
merit of being told upon the place of
its occurrence, upon the river whose waters
had been dyed with his own blood and the
blood of many a hapless companion, and at
the very spot which had witnessed its fearful
catastrophe. It was a tale strongly illustrative,
and with but few exaggerated features,
of the earlier navigation of the Ohio, when

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

the unwieldy flat-boat, or broad-horn, took
the place of the steamer; when men inexperienced
in navigation, and entirely unacquainted
with the river upon which they so
boldly launched, were the only sailors and
pilots; and when, above all, the river-banks
were lined with Indians, lying in wait to plunder
and murder.

It was a fine evening of early October,
183—; the beautiful hills, forest-clad to the
top, had put on their glorious mantles of gold
and scarlet; the clumps of trees on the shores
and islands,—some half bared of leaves, displaying
the tufts of green misletoe on their
branches and the purple ivies draping their
pillared trunks, some still in full leaf and glowing,
here like a sunshiny cloud, and there
like a hillock of cinnabar—glassed themselves
in a tide as smooth and bright as quicksilver,
in which their reflections, and the images of
bank and hill, were as clear and distinct to
the vision as the objects themselves; so that
we seemed to be rather sailing down a river
of air than any grosser element.

It was an hour when—every one having
finished his supper—travellers felt sentimental
and philosophic, and dragged their
chairs to the boiler-deck; where—with the

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

consciousness all had, that, in case of a boiler
bursting, they were in the best place in the
boat to be blown to atoms—each surveyed
the Eden-like prospects continually arising,
admired, commented, and prepared his store
of anecdote, to take part in the story-telling
conversation, which always formed the entertainment
of the evening.

It was at this period that the old gentleman,
(Mr. Law, he said, was his name,) who
had on previous occasions narrated many interesting
anecdotes of other persons, without
doing more than hint at his own adventures,
was prevailed upon to speak of himself, of his
own travel's history; which he did with such
unction and effect, at least so far as regarded
myself, that I was never easy afterward
until I had fully committed his story to writing.
I have only to regret that I did not obtain
for it, as thus faithfully recorded, the
proper evidence of authenticity; that is, a
certificate of its accuracy by the narrator,
under his own hand and seal; which would
have settled the doubts of all such skeptical
persons as may be disposed to regard it as a
fiction and coinage of my own imagination.

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