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Show 60 Early Western Travels [ Vol. 26 was delightful to remove from the noise, and heat, and confusion below to the lofty hurricane deck, and lounge away hour after hour in gazing upon the varied and beautiful scenes which presented themselves in constant succession to the eye. Now we were gliding quietly on through the long island [ 30] chutes, where the daylight was dim, and the enormous forest- trees bowed themselves over us, and echoed from their still recesses the roar of our steam- pipe; then we were sweeping rapidly over the broad reaches of the stream, miles in extent; again we were winding through the mazy labyrinth of islets which fleckered the placid surface of the stream, and from time to time we passed the lonely cabin of the emigrant beneath the venerable and aged sycamores. Here and there, as we glided on, we met some relic of those ancient and primitive species of river- craft which once assumed ascendency over the waters of the West, but which are now superseded by steam, and are of too infrequent occurrence not to be objects of peculiar interest. In die early era of the navigation of the Ohio, the species of craft in use were numberless, and many of them of a most whimsical and amusing description. The first was the barge, sometimes of an hundred tons' burden, which required twenty men to force it up against the current a distance of six or seven miles a day; next the keel- boat, of smaller size and lighter structure, yet in use for the purposes of inland commerce; then the Kentucky flat, or broad- horn of the emigrant; the enormous ark, in magnitude and proportion approximating to that of the patriarch; the fairy pirogue of the French voyageur; the birch caique of the Indian, and log skiffs, gondolas, and dug- outs of the pioneer without name or number." But 14 The keel- boat was usually from sixty to seventy feet long, and fifteen to eighteen broad at beam, with a keel extending from bow to stern, and had a draft of twenty to thirty inches. When descending the stream, the force of the current, |