Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/171

Rh years, "by the old and nearly forgotten flat-boat system I was familiar with the sight of these primitive navigators and their sluggish moving vessels when in the early spring days they came down I have seen several generations on a single flatboat, from the white haired grand-sire and his aged helpmate, seated in rude chairs of domestic manufacture, with split hickory bottoms, down to the infant babe nestled in its rough hewn cradle, made by the ax of the stalwart young man, father to a group of little 'towheads' who surrounded the parents, and their small assortment of household goods. A cow—that domesticated helpmate to the family of the emigrating poor—was generally tied near the center of the flatboat, and on the lumber or planks that were intended, when the voyage terminated, to be made into flooring, and combine with the broken up flat-boat to make a quickly constructed home at some point on the forest covered hills of Kentucky or Ohio, or on the low, flat lands that border the Mississippi They were going to settle in the wilderness, with a cow, a flitch of bacon, a small coop of