Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/112

 *prised at hearing the river making a great noise, The Pittsburg navigator not giving any notice of a rapid, and as a thick fog prevented me from seeing the cause, I went on shore to reconnoitre. Before reaching the place from whence {82} the noise proceeded, a boy informed me that a great fresh (flood) in M'Mahon's Creek, happened last summer, at a time when the Ohio was low, and that it had carried earth and trees from the bottom land, together with a house and a family, into the river. The devastation produced by this torrent is truly astonishing. It has cut a great chasm through the bottom land, which is about twenty-five feet high, and scooped it out many feet lower than the surface of the Ohio. A large bar, that in some measure dams the river, has large trees intermixed with it; their roots and branches standing above the water. This is the obstacle and cause that occasion the noisy ripple.

The last tavern that we passed here, had no sign-board. In consequence of which I supposed it to be a private house, and, after sailing several miles down the river, was obliged to put ashore, when nearly dusk, at a farm-house about nine miles below Wheeling.

November 5. The family with whom I lodged last night, seem to be industrious and well disposed. Two daughters were busily engaged in tailor work for the males. This, they said, is a common practice in the country. They also told me of a young lady of the neighbourhood, who had just gone to the house of her bridegroom, to make his marriage suit. As this occurrence was told with some degree of disapprobation, it is not to be viewed as in unison with the manners of the people.

Twelve miles and a half below Wheeling, and a quarter of a mile from the river, on the left-hand side, there is a