Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/54

 CHAPTER II

YOUTH the Kentucky shore, below Louisville, in the midst of Nature's unkempt, umbrageous, and solemn solitudes, there debouches into the Ohio an affluent whose pellucid waters gave no token of the broken hopes, withered ambitions, blasted reputations, and shattered political careers which its name suggests to the American ear. For this is the renowned Salt River of our political mythology, the stream to whose headwaters are annually consigned the defeated aspirants for elective office, and which is more melancholy than the classic Styx in that every political ghost that journeys upon it to oblivion must serve as his own Charon.

It was on the "rolling fork" of Salt River that Thomas Lincoln, in the fall of 1816, embarked in quest of a new home; and he pursued that stream through its various sinuosities until it joined Salt River proper. This stream, however, had not yet acquired its baleful reputation, and did not have to live up to a bad character. So Thomas Lincoln safely steered himself and cargo down its course to the great Ohio. Perversely enough, this river belied the favorable name by which the early French voyageurs had christened it, "La Belle Rivière." Coming out on its turbid tide, Lincoln's boat foundered, and 24