Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/24

8 The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted. It is a quarter of a mile wide at Fort Pitt; 500 yards at the mouth of the Great Kanhaway; 1 mile and 25 poles at Louisville; quarter of a mile on the Rapids, 3 or 4 miles below Louisville; half a mile where the low country begins, which is 20 miles above Green River; one and a quarter at the receipt of the Tanissee; and a mile wide at the mouth. Its length, as measured according to its meanders by Captain Hutchings, is as follows:

From Fort Pitt: In common Winter and Spring tides it affords 15 feet water to Louisville, 10 feet to La Tarte's Rapids, 40 miles above the mouth of the Great Kanhaway, and a sufficiency at all times for light batteaux and canoes to Fort Pitt. The Rapids are in latitude 38° 8′. The inundations of this river begin about the last of March, and subside in July. During these, a first rate man of war may be carried from Louisville to New Orleans, if the sudden turns of the river and the strength of its current