He was not only very early in his life a tall,
strong country boy, but as he grew up he soon became a tall, strong,
sinewy man. He early attained the unusual height of six feet four
inches, with arms of proportionate length. This gave him a degree of
power and facility as an ax-man which few had or were able to acquire.
He was therefore usually able to lead his fellows in efforts of both
muscle and mind. He performed the tasks of his daily labor and mastered
the lessons of his scanty schooling with an ease and rapidity they were
unable to attain.

Twice during his life in Indiana this ordinary routine was somewhat
varied. When he was sixteen, while working for a man who lived at the
mouth of Anderson's Creek, it was part of his duty to manage a
ferry-boat which transported passengers across the Ohio River. It was
doubtless this which three years later brought him a new experience,
that he himself related in these words:

"When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, he made his first
trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. He was a hired hand merely, and he
and a son of the owner, without other assistance, made the trip. The
nature of part of the 'cargo load,' as it was called, made it necessary
for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast, and one night they
were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They
were hurt some in the melee, but succeeded in driving the negroes from
the boat, and then 'cut cable,' 'weighed anchor,' and left."

This commercial enterprise was set on foot by Mr. Gentry, the founder of
Gentryville. The affair shows us that Abraham had gained an enviable
standing in the village as a man of honesty, skill, and judgment--one
who could be depended on to meet such emergencies as might arise in
selling their bacon and other produce to the cotton-planters along the
shores of the lower Mississippi.

By this time Abraham's education was well advanced. His handwriting, his
arithmetic, and his general intelligence were so good that he had
occasionally been employed to help in the Gentryville store, and Gentry
thus knew by personal test that he was entirely capable of assisting his
son Allen in the trading expedition to New Orleans. For Abraham, on the
other hand, it was an event which must have opened up wide vistas of
future hope and ambition. Allen Gentry probably was nominal supercargo
and steersman, but we may easily surmise that Lincoln, as the "bow oar,"
carried his ful