Historic Highways of America Volume XII Part 7

d.i.c.kens's description of his visit to "Looking-Gla.s.s Prairie" from St.

Louis is full of amus.e.m.e.nt, and contains many vivid pictures of pioneer roads and taverns in the Mississippi Valley:

"As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back from the furthest point of my wanderings; and as some gentlemen of the town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal desire to gratify me; a day was fixed, before my departure, for an expedition to the Looking-Gla.s.s Prairie, which is within thirty miles of the town. Deeming it possible that my readers may not object to know what kind of thing such a gipsy party may be at that distance from home, and among what sort of objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt....

"I may premise that the word Prairie is variously p.r.o.nounced _paraaer_, _parearer_, and _paroarer_. The latter mode of p.r.o.nunciation is perhaps the most in favour. We were fourteen in all, and all young men: indeed it is a singular though very natural feature in the society of these distant settlements, that it is mainly composed of adventurous persons in the prime of life, and has very few grey heads among it. There were no ladies: the trip being a fatiguing one: and we were to start at five o'clock in the morning punctually....

"At seven o'clock ... the party had a.s.sembled, and were gathered round one light carriage, with a very stout axletree; one something on wheels like an amateur carrier's cart; one double phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly construction; one gig with a great hole in its back and a broken head; and one rider on horseback who was to go on before. I got into the first coach with three companions; the rest bestowed themselves in the other vehicles; two large baskets were made fast to the lightest; two large stone jars in wicker cases, technically known as demi-johns, were consigned to the 'least rowdy' of the party for safe keeping; and the procession moved off to the ferry-boat, in which it was to cross the river bodily, men, horses, carriages, and all as the manner in these parts is.

"We got over the river in due course, and mustered again before a little wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a mora.s.s, with 'MERCHANT TAILOR' painted in very large letters over the door. Having settled the order of proceeding, and the road to be taken, we started off once more and began to make our way through an ill-favoured Black Hollow, called, less expressively, the American Bottom....

"We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a couple of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, who, with the pigs (a coa.r.s.e, ugly breed, as unwholesome-looking as though they were the spontaneous growth of the country), had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we pa.s.sed a log hut; but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is very rich in this place, few people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick 'bush;' and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water.

"As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted for that purpose, at a log inn in the wood, far removed from any other residence.

It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled of course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like bed-furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers.

There were a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idly by the well; and they, and he, and _the_ traveller at the inn, turned out to look at us....

"When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that this kind of inflation improves their going), we went forward again, through mud and mire, and damp, and festering heat, and brake and bush, attended always by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called Belleville.

"Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled together in the very heart of the bush and swamp.... The criminal court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some criminals for horse-stealing; with whom it would most likely go hard: for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very much exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather higher value than human life; and for this reason, juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no. The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road; by which is to be understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in mud and slime.

"There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half cowshed and half kitchen, with a coa.r.s.e brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables prepared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He had ordered 'wheat-bread and chicken fixings,' in preference to 'corn-bread and common doings.'[47] The latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that nature as may be supposed, by a tolerably wide poetical construction, 'to fix' a chicken comfortably in the digestive organs of any lady or gentleman....

"From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind of waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of a moment, by the same music; until, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we halted once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses again, and give them some corn besides: of which they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony, I walked into the village, where I met a full sized dwelling-house coming down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a score or more of oxen. The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there for the night, if possible. This course decided on, and the horses being well refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie at sunset.

"It would be difficult to say why, or how--though it was possibly from having heard and read so much about it--but the effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay, stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of level ground; unbroken, save by one thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great blank; until it met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip: mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it; a few birds wheeling here and there; and solitude and silence reigning paramount around. But the gra.s.s was not yet high; there were bare black patches on the ground; and the few wild flowers that the eye could see, were poor and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies, I could never abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else; as I should do instinctively, were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron-bound coast beyond; but should often glance towards the distant and frequently-receding line of the horizon, and wish it gained and pa.s.sed. It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I think (at all events, as I saw it), to remember with much pleasure, or to covet the looking-on again, in after life.

"We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its water, and dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast fowls, buffalo's tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, bread, cheese, and b.u.t.ter; biscuits, champagne, sherry; lemons and sugar for punch; and abundance of rough ice. The meal was delicious, and the entertainers were the soul of kindness and good humour. I have often recalled that cheerful party to my pleasant recollection since, and shall not easily forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of older date, my boon companions on the Prairie. Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at which we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison with any village ale-house, of a homely kind, in England....

"After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from that which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock with an encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, we stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial-places, called The Monks' Mound; in memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there, many years ago, when there were no settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious climate: in which lamentable fatality, few rational people will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe deprivation.

"The track of to-day had the same features as the track of yesterday.

There was the swamp, the bush, the perpetual chorus of frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we encountered a solitary broken-down waggon, full of some new settler's goods. It was a pitiful sight to see one of these vehicles deep in the mire; the axletree broken; the wheel lying idly by its side; the man gone miles away, to look for a.s.sistance; the woman seated among their wandering household G.o.ds with a baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected patience; the team of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, and breathing forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come direct from them.

"In due time we mustered once again before the merchant tailor's, and having done so, crossed over to the city in the ferry-boat: pa.s.sing, on the way, a spot called b.l.o.o.d.y Island, the duelling-ground of St. Louis, and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat fought there, which was with pistols, breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the ground; and possibly some rational people may think of them, as of the gloomy madmen on the Monks' Mound, that they were no great loss to the community."

For purposes of comparison, the following description of experiences in later times with Indian trails of the West will be of interest. Much that has been deduced from a study of our pioneer history and embodied in the preceding pages finds strong confirmation here; in earlier days, with forests covering the country, the trails were more like roads than in the open prairies of the West; but, as will be seen, many laws governed the earlier and the later Indian thoroughfares, alike. I quote from the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray's memoirs, written three-quarters of a century ago, of a tour in Missouri:

"On the 18th we pursued our course, north by east: this was not exactly the direction in which I wished to travel, but two considerations induced me to adopt it at this part of the journey. In the first place, it enabled me to keep along the dividing ridge; an advantage so great, and so well understood by all prairie travellers, that it is worth making a circuit of several miles a day to keep it; and the Indian trails which we have crossed since our residence in the wilderness, convince me that the savages pay the greatest attention to this matter.

In a wide extent of country composed of a succession of hills and ridges, it is evident there must be a great number of steep banks, which offer to an inexperienced traveller numerous obstacles, rendering his own progress most toilsome, and that of loaded packhorses almost impossible. If these ridges all ran in parallel lines, and were regular in their formation, nothing would be more simple than to get upon the summit of one, and keep it for the whole day's journey: but such is not the case; they constantly meet other ridges running in a transverse direction; and, of course, large dips and ravines are consequent upon that meeting. The 'dividing ridge' of a district is that which, while it is, as it were, the back-bone of the range of which it forms a part, heads at the same time all the transverse ravines, whether on the right or on the left hand, and thereby spares to the traveller an infinity of toilsome ascent and descent.

"I have sometimes observed that an Indian trail wound through a country in a course perfectly serpentine, and appeared to me to travel three miles when only one was necessary. It was not till my own practical experience had made me attend more closely to this matter, that I learnt to appreciate its importance. I think that the first quality in a guide through an unknown range of rolling prairie, is having a good and a quick eye for hitting off the 'dividing ridge;' the second, perhaps, in a western wilderness, is a ready and almost intuitive perception (so often found in an Indian) of the general character of a country, so as to be able to bring his party to water when it is very scarce....

A few miles farther we crossed an old Indian trail I think it was of a p.a.w.nee party, for it bore north by west ... it had not been a war-party, as was evident from the character of the trail. A war-party leaves only the trail of the horses, or, of course, if it be a foot party, the still slighter tracks of their own feet; but when they are on their summer hunt, or migrating from one region to another, they take their squaws and children with them, and this trail can always be distinguished from the former, by two parallel tracks about three and a half feet apart, not unlike those of a light pair of wheels: these are made by the points of the long curved poles on which their lodges are stretched, the thickest or b.u.t.t ends of which are fastened to each side of the pack-saddle, while the points trail behind the horse; in crossing rough or boggy places, this is often found the most inconvenient part of an Indian camp equipage.... I was fortunate enough to find an Indian trail bearing north by east, which was as near to our destined course as these odious creeks would permit us to go. We struck into it, and it brought us safely, though not without difficulty, through the tangled and muddy bottom in which we had been involved: sometimes a horse floundered, and more than once a pack came off; but upon the whole we had great reason to congratulate ourselves upon having found this trail, by which we escaped in two hours from a place which would, without its a.s.sistance, probably have detained us two days. I was by no means anxious to part with so good a friend, and proceeded some miles upon this same trail; it was very old and indistinct, especially in the high and dry parts of the prairie. I left my horse with the rest of the party and went on foot, in order that I might more easily follow the trail, which became almost imperceptible as we reached an elevated district of table-land, which had been burned so close that I very often lost the track altogether for fifty yards. If a fire takes place on a prairie where there is already a distinct trail, it is as easy to follow it, if not more so than before; because the short and beaten gra.s.s offering no food to the fire, partly escapes its fury, and remains a green line upon a sea of black; but if the party making the trail pa.s.s over a prairie which is already burnt, in the succeeding season when the new gra.s.s has grown, it can scarcely be traced by any eye but that of an Indian.... After we had travelled five hours ... I found that the trail which we had been following, merged in another and a larger one, which appeared to run a point to the west of north. This was so far out of our course that I hesitated whether I should not leave it altogether; but, upon reflection, I determined not to do so ... if I attempted to cross the country farther to the eastward, without any trail, I should meet with serious difficulties and delays.... I therefore struck into it, and ere long the result justified my conjecture; for we came to a wooded bottom or valley, which was such a complete jungle, and so extensive, that I am sure, if we had not been guided by the trail, we could not have made our way through it in a week. As it was, the task was no easy one; for the trail, though originally large, was not very fresh, and the weeds and branches had in many places so overgrown it, that I was obliged to dismount and trace it out on foot. It wound about with a hundred serpentine evolutions to avoid the heavy swamps and marshes around us; and I repeatedly thought that, if we lost it, we never should extricate our baggage: even with its a.s.sistance, we were obliged frequently to halt and replace the packs, which were violently forced off by the branches with which they constantly came in contact ... 'where on earth is he taking us now?--why we are going back in the same direction as we came!' I turned round and asked the speaker (a comrade) ... to point with his finger to the quarter which he would make for if he were guiding the party to Fort Leavenworth. He did so; and I took out my compa.s.s and showed him that he was pointing south-west, _i.e._ to Santa Fe and the Gulf of California: so completely had the poor fellow's head become puzzled by the winding circuit we had made in the swamp."[48]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Washington's _Journal_ Sept. 2nd to Oct. 4th, 1784.

[2] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. v, ch. 3.

[3] This creek rises in Hardy County, Virginia, and flows northeastward through Hampshire County, entering the North Branch of the Potomac River about eight miles southeast of c.u.mberland, Maryland.

[4] Union Township, Monongalia County, West Virginia.

[5] Oliphant's Iron Furnace, Union Township?

[6] The mountainous boundary line between Monongalia and Preston Counties.

[7] Bruceton's Mills, Grant Township, Preston County, West Virginia?

[8] Southwestern corner of Maryland, some twenty miles north of Oakland.

[9] Briery Mountain runs northeast through the eastern edge of Preston County, bounding Dunkard Bottom on the east as Cheat River bounds it on the west.

[10] The Friends were the earliest pioneers of Garrett County, John Friend coming in 1760 bringing six sons among whom was this Charles. The sons scattered about through the valley of the Youghiogheny, Charles settling near the mouth of Sang Run, which cuts through Winding Ridge Mountain and joins the Youghiogheny about fifteen miles due north from Oakland. Washington, moving eastward on McCulloch's Path probably pa.s.sed through this gap in Winding Ridge. A present-day road runs parallel with Winding Ridge from Friendsville (named from this pioneer family) southward to near Altamont, which route seems to have been that pursued by McCulloch's Path. See Scharf's _History of Western Maryland_, vol.

ii, p. 1518; _Atlas of Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1873), pp. 47-48; War Atlas 1861-65, _House Miscellaneous Doc.u.ments_, vol. iv, part 2, No. 261, 52d Cong. 1st Sess. 1891-92, Plate cx.x.xvi.

[11] Great Back Bone Mountain, Garrett County, Maryland, on which, at Altamont, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway reaches its highest alt.i.tude.

It was about here that Washington now crossed it, probably on the watershed between Youghiogheny and Potomac waters west of Altamont.

[12] Ryan's Glade No. 10, Garrett County.

[13] This point is pretty definitely determined in the Journal. We are told that the mouth of Stony River (now Stony Creek) was four miles below McCulloch's crossing. This would locate the latter near the present site of Fort Pendleton, Garrett County, Maryland, the point where the old Northwestern Turnpike crossed the North Branch.

[14] Greeland Gap, Grant County, West Virginia.

[15] k.n.o.bby Mountain.

[16] Near Moorefield, Hardy County, West Virginia.

[17] Mt. Storm, Grant County. The Old Northwestern Turnpike bears northeast from here to Claysville, Burlington and Romney. Washington's route was southwest along the line of the present road to Moorefield.

Evidently the buffalo trace bore southwest on the watershed between Stony River and Abraham's Creek--White's _West Virginia Atlas_ (1873), p. 26. Bradley's _Map of United States_ (1804) shows a road from Morgantown to Romney; also a "Western Fort" at the crossing-place of the Youghiogheny.

[18] Dunkard's Bottom, in Portland Township, Preston County, West Virginia, was settled about 1755 by Dr. Thomas Eckarly and brothers who traversed the old path to Fort Pleasant on South Branch.--Thwaites's edition of Withers's _Chronicles of Border Warfare_ (1895), pp. 75-76.

[19] _Laws of Virginia_ (1826-1827), pp. 85-87.

[20] _Laws of Virginia_ (1831), pp. 153-158; _Journal of the Senate ...

of Virginia_ (1830-31), p. 165.

[21] See _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ix, pp. 60-64.

[22] _Journal of Thomas Wallcutt in 1790_, edited by George Dexter (_Proceedings of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society_, October, 1879).