Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/74

 *companied another vessel of the same kind, and, for mutual convenience, our boats, according to custom, were lashed together side by side, thus also facilitating our progress by obtaining a greater scope of the current.

9th.] We continued at the same rate, floating along without any labour, except that of occasionally rowing out from the shore, or avoiding submerged trunks of trees, called snags or sawyers, as they are either stationary or moveable with the action of the current; by the French they are called chicos. In the night {38} we passed the town of Troy, an insignificant handful of log-cabins, dignified by this venerable name; here we stopped a few minutes to unload some salt, which, in consequence of the scarcity, incident to the low stage of water, sold at four dollars per bushel. Nearly all the salt which supplies this country descends the Kanhaway.

On the 10th we arrived at Owensville,[42] more commonly called Yellow Banks, from the ochraceous appearance of the argillaceous friable bank of the river. This is another insignificant cluster of log-cabins, and the seat of a county. Flour sold here at 10 dollars per barrel. In consequence of the want of mills, they depend altogether on the upper country for their supplies of this important article. Mills are much wanted, and, in order even to obtain corn-meal, every one has to invent something of the kind for himself. At this place the store-keepers were busily collecting pork for the market of New Orleans, at the rate of five dollars per hundred, in exchange for dry-goods and