Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/168

 of the former than the latter, which only happens obliquely at the conflux. The Ohio may be, at Pittsburgh, two hundred fathoms broad. The current of this immense and magnificent river inclines at first north west for about twenty miles, then bends gradually west south west. It follows that direction for about the space of five hundred miles; turns thence south west a hundred and sixty miles; then west two hundred and seventy-five; at length runs into the Mississippi in a south-westerly direction, in the latitude of 36 deg. 46 min. about eleven hundred miles from Pittsburgh, and nearly {69} the same distance from Orleans. This river runs so extremely serpentine, that in going down it, you appear following a track directly opposite to the one you mean to take. Its breadth varies from two hundred to a thousand fathoms. The islands that are met with in its current are very numerous. We counted upward of fifty in the space of three hundred and eighty miles. Some contain but a few acres, and others more than a thousand in length. Their banks are very low, and must be subject to inundations. These islands are a great impediment to the navigation in the summer. The sands that the river drives up form, at the head of some of them, a number of little shoals; and in this season of the year the channel is so narrow from the want of water, that the few boats, even of a middling size, that venture to go down, are frequently run aground, and it is with great difficulty that they are got afloat; notwithstanding which there is at all times a sufficiency of water for a skiff or a canoe. As these little boats are very light when they strike upon the sands, it is very easy to push them off into a deeper part. In consequence of this, it is only in the spring and autumn that the Ohio is navigable, at least as far as Limestone, about a hundred and twenty {70}